Callings
by PhaerynTao
Summary: With the dust of labor in your hair, your brain feels at home. But your heart still wonders if you made the right decision.
1. Cyclonis

a/n: I'm honestly not sure what to say about this one, other than the fact that it's pretty experimental and that I was really kind of focusing on other things more than the plot (as you will soon realize). I wanted to sample writing in different points of view. Even the writing style is a little different than what I'm used to. This thing was going to be a ridiculously long oneshot, so I decided to do you poor people a favor and split it up a little so it didn't bombard the crap out of you with words, words, and more words. Three chapters, I'm thinking. Three fairly long chapters. I'm sorry, I really am. But I'm a oneshot person; its just the way I normally work, so this is a pathetic example of me stepping out of my comfort zone in order to hopefully make it easier to read.

But on a slightly better note, it did give me a chance to play with some interaction between Cyclonis and Piper, something I haven't really done yet, and have been inspired by fellow authors to attempt. Lots of references to my previously made theories about Cyclonis's origin as well.

For Dragonwings144, even though she probably won't like this. Whether she knows it or not, she has made a friend, one that appreciates the way she treats them as an equal and encourages them try to explore both the inside and outside of the box.

I don't own SH.

-0-

_**Cyclonis**_

Sometimes, if I squint hard enough, I can literally see the dust of everything going on in the other parts of the world-the seemingly infinite world that I helped turn upside down. I was not the leader of a bloodthirsty empire anymore, but it would take a while to fix all the damage I had done. I shook it like a snow globe, with blood covered specks becoming unsettled and drifting gracefully in the sphere of contained water. Spheres: they were something that I had much experience with. They keep you fed and they keep you warm. They keep your skin soft and your mind peaceful. They block out all of the noise that reality loved to encase those living within it.

There were times that I wanted to go back to the days before I was actually alive and self sustaining. The days when all of the scientists who would pump liquidated food into my tubes would sound like a bunch of fuzz, but when they would accidentally put their palm up to the glass of my home I could hear their pulses softly throb. I would never smile, nor could I open my eyes; I was unborn, after all. But I did appreciate what little of real life I was allowed to experience.

Nowadays, I wish it was all I had experienced. The living pulses of humanity would have been enough for me if I had known what I was about to be brought into. After being born I had to hear their voices when they told me they had failed to fulfill my orders, or touch the heightening hairs on the back of a certain someone's neck when I ran my hand through their obsidian mop. Over the years I have learned how to rule, be cruel, intolerant, and immoral, and I'll admit, maybe sometimes I truly enjoyed it. I do seem to be the embodiment of the hideous part of each person, the part they always do their best to ignore but wish they could indulge in at least once.

Never did I pretend to be malevolent.

I came out much like an ordinary birth, except there wasn't a woman screaming about the contractions and the placenta wasn't filled with the smell of metallic blood. I was pretty slimy though, and my eyes couldn't bear to expose themselves to the diabolical red glow of my inherited fortress. So as I came out of my clear precious embryo, soaking wet and naked as a baby rat, my developed but unused brain was thankful for the mysterious pair of arms that held me close, at least attempting to secure my shivering form.

Everything seems so far away, and I'm selfishly grateful for that. I may not feel guilt for the turmoil I've raged across the world, but I'd much rather be far from it than having a front row seat.

How can I feel remorseful? It was what I was raised to do.

_Intended _to do.

It's been years.

I have weird dreams about crumbling castles and people with missing limbs. The vast amount of time I spend by myself contemplating things I'd rather not is filled with an annoying effort to keep the anxiety out of my daily sensations. If it wasn't about tactical strategies, crystal manipulation, or news about specific reliable individuals who used to belong to the Cyclonian empire, then more often than not I didn't want a goddamn thing to do with it.

At least, that's how it was.

-0-

This raid was very bad. So bad that even in my throne room, so far from the outside, I could hear battle calls and the clash of energy blades and crystal staffs. If I wasn't clutching my dark cloak and huddling in a pool of my own sweat and urine I probably would have plucked up the courage to congratulate the Sky Knights for such a well executed invasion.

Of all the fucking times to have a relapse.

The large doors to my throne room opened, and through the droplets of cold sweat running down into my eyes I could see someone enter. A blinding red single blade gave it away completely, and I almost rejoiced. He was always my protector, but never had I had him actually fight my battles for me. And as much as I hated it, I didn't have a choice this time.

Dark Ace scanned the room, found me, and touched the back of his hand to my sour and clammy cheek. He sighed heavily, a brief show of alarm before asking:

"Are you deteriorating again, Master?"

Good Lord, I hated that word.

I nodded slowly, fearing that my brain would slip out of one of my ears and onto the cold floor beside me if I did it too hard.

"They're coming. What will you have me do?"

No vows to fight at the front line? No cocky recitations of plans to make the Sky Knights fall to their knees?

It must've really been the end.

Which was a damn shame-I still had a lot left in me, or so I thought.

I said nothing to my right hand; I just looked away into the ether and his expression went from violently concentrated to frantic.

"Master, they're coming for _you. _Do you have any idea what they'll do to you if you're caught?"

My upper lip sneered, and I snorted.

"That's an easy one. They'll kill me."

Dark Ace shook his head and ran a gritty frustrated hand through his hair. I wanted to somehow tell him that I was no more prepared to surrender than he was; but what could I do? I was a hunched over mass of sweat and sickness. There was nothing I could do. Suddenly Dark Ace bent down and gathered my skinny body up in my cloak, ignoring that I must have smelled like filth, and carried me to the second door that connected to the throne room. I almost laughed at this man's inability to leave me. I guess in a way it was quite sweet. Of course the swooning thoughts gave ultimate way to the possibility of capture and the rising waves of nausea that I was starting to feel.

The hallways we walked through were fresh and it was obvious that the feet of Talon soldiers rarely touched the floors of it. I wouldn't say it was a secret hideout, but there were few that I'd let into the door next to my throne. The corridors were long and winding, and a hot sickening wind blew into our faces. Occasionally I made Dark Ace set me down so I could crawl on all fours to some inconspicuous corner and vomit up my insides.

The explosions were drawing nearer. And my body was closer and closer to failing for good. There were epinephrine shots in my lab, but that was long time by now. It probably fell hours ago to the Sky Knights. I cringed at the thought of those bastards mindlessly tearing away at years of scientific progress and break throughs. To them it was just 'evil Master Cyclonis stuff' instead of valuable information that could probably help them restore every last bit of peace to the Atmos.

For a brief second I wondered if they were monsters as well, just out for a different kind of blood than I was.

Another lurch tore through my nerves and I coughed hard, clutching Dark Ace's shoulders for dear life and damn thankful that he didn't object to me expelling bacteria-infested air all over him. I thought we could make it to the back hanger, but I ceased all hopes of that happening after I coughed one last time and felt a projectile wad of blood hit the back of my teeth.

I was dying. I had to do something.

The thought made me retch, but there was no way to avoid it.

I needed a Medullary Function Enhancement.

An entire session took weeks, even months. The machine was fashioned to keep my bones and muscles conditioned while the treatment ran its lengthy course through my diseased body, enhancing everything that the sickness destroyed.

The thing was I didn't have that kind of time.

They were coming for me, right then and now, and if I stopped for anything I'd be seized and what they would do to me would be much worse than heaving out what little life I had left in these stinking back halls of my fortress.

One good dilemma.

Dark Ace saw a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of my mouth and gently used his thumb to wipe it away.

"We're almost there, Master."

From the sound of his voice, it was obvious that he knew. My body was fading; without treatment I would have to cross over the threshold to the other side, and he knew it the second he the drop of dark red on my thin chaffed lips. However, regardless of the circumstances, he made no notion to do anything about it. We just kept on walking, my frail skeletal frame in his arms and the putrid air still hitting us with gusto. Between the contractions and sways of stomach-turning fatigue, I listened. I'm sure Dark Ace did too. Something didn't feel right, and there were sounds of footsteps where there shouldn't have been. A gross feeling rose throughout the both of us, but it didn't have anything to do with my disease.

The hanger was close.

The air was thick as paste.

Dark Ace's heavily armored skimmer was in view and for a split second I felt elated.

Of course that was before I saw Piper of the Storm Hawks, her trusty staff over one of her shoulders, and looking more ready for a fight than ever.

Her eyes flickered with excited apprehension. Piper let fear get to her about as much as her red headed counterpart, so in that sense I was worried. Having dueled with her myself, I knew that she posed a big enough threat. That, and her knowledge with crystals equaled mine liberally, even if she didn't know it yet.

The Dark Ace narrowed his eyes, and put me down so that I stood on my shaky stick thin legs and leaned on his shoulders. He didn't like fighting Piper. I never had the guts to ask why; he just didn't. She wasn't Aerrow, so it would offer him no chance to redeem his repeated losses that not even I jest him for. Somehow, I felt that this would end quickly though. Indeed, she wasn't Aerrow. But I knew Dark Ace better than anyone, and it was a fact that Aerrow got under his skin. Piper was just as good, but this time there was no upper hand.

"What's wrong, Cyclonis?" Piper asked.

That sounded like a direct question. Without the jibe, without witty banter following it.

Dark Ace glanced at me, as if advising me not to speak in return. My disciples seem to regret defying me, but vice versa I couldn't care less.

"I'm feeling a bit under the weather." I said.

My voice sounded so unlike it usually did: Weak, faraway, outlying. And I wasn't fond of it at all.

"Trust me," She said, "You're going to feel a lot worse if you stay here any longer."

That perturbed me. Did she know about my relapse, or was she talking about the storming of the fortress?

Dark Ace powered up his red energy blade.

"Are you going to stand there trying to stall us, or are you going to try and fight me?" said Dark Ace, his voice as low as it could possibly get.

Piper reached into a pouch fastened to her hip.

And in her hand she held an epinephrine needle out in front of us.

Both mine and Dark Ace's eyes widened at the sight. It was what we needed to get away. Even if we did escape on his skimmer there was no way that I would survive a journey to another terra with an adrenaline shot.

"Your lab is an incredible place, Cyclonis." Piper said slowly, pretending to examine the needle closely. "I wanted to stop them from destroying it…but what can I say, there were more important matters at hand."

I narrowed my eyes. _Like what?_

My skin was cold as ice and slimy with unhealthy perspiration. Dark Ace and I darted back and forth between the needle and the startlingly emotionless expression on Piper's face. It hadn't yet come to begging, but somewhere in the back of my pinching head I was getting ready to start. Piper approached us, her staff at her side in one hand and the needle in the other. Dark Ace was ready to send her head rolling, and I was preparing myself to see that. Piper may be on the opposite side, but on top of everything else that was chaotic at the moment I really didn't want to see her decapitated.

Before Dark Ace could do anything she forced me onto my back and grabbed my leg from underneath my cloak, accurately inserting the needle into one of my veins. I groaned and bit the knuckle of my index finger-it was painful when it wasn't being administered by myself. I immediately felt the effects of the serum, and the nausea, headache, and twinges in my bones dulled to a minimum.

She backed away. I stood up, still using a bewildered Dark Ace for support.

"What the hell was that for?" I asked her.

Finally, she smiled a bit.

"When they catch you, they're going to tear you apart." She said.

"No shit?" I said, smirking slightly.

"Well, I can't let that happen."

This girl was more wigged out than I was when I found my father's delightfully aged supply of liquor.

"Cyclonis, this girl is wasting our time." Dark Ace said, detaching himself from me and moving forward to forcibly subdue her.

"Wait." I said to him, and he looked back at me in angry astonishment.

Still under the impression that there was no way in hell that she could truly be set on helping me escape, I said:

"Well, Piper. What do you propose we do?"

-0-

I was the result of In Vitro Fertilization-without the female sex cell. When my father was alive, and the supreme ruler of Cyclonia, he used a milky dosage of his sperm and unnatural meiosis to create an heir. The woman who was meant to be my mother was supposedly infertile, unable to bear children. For that reason Dad saw to it that she was disposed of.

Depressing, yes. But moving on.

The sphere in which I was produced in was a comforting and waiflike place. But while I was calmly situated in the warm soothing waters of the chamber, the tubes connected to the base were feeding me poison. It went into the water, and into my skin. Into my eyes and into my mouth, into my bloodstream. There it went dormant until I became active enough for it to resurface.

I came out what appeared to be a healthy girl. All sodden and dripping, blind like a newborn kitten, just like everyone had predicted. They cleaned me up and took me away in a cream colored blanket. It was a big day for me; just because I didn't look like an infant didn't mean that I could automatically be briefed about my purpose and standing in this world. There weren't many times that I was shown tenderness in my life, not that I'm complaining. It's not very offsetting for a person such as me. But when I came out of the sphere, normally hard assed Cyclonian officials as well as Talons actually greeted me with 'oohs' and 'aww's. Some of them even pinched my cheeks. Like I was in some fucking nursery school. Oh well, as weird as it was, I can't say I didn't enjoy it.

I finally opened my eyes, and suddenly I was flooded with information about me, my inheritance, and the spreading of the empire. I was taught to read, and I was taught how to be in command. In fact sometimes I remember tugging shyly at Dark Ace's arm after following him to the common hanger, in hope of him showing me how to pilot a skimmer. He would rarely smile at me, but every time we spoke his bloody eyes that often glittered in malice and loathing would suddenly become kind.

First, the aches came. I was probably about seventeen, but who's counting. I couldn't sit in a chair tampering with my crystals for hours anymore. I slept restlessly each night, tossing and turning while trying to find a position to lay in that would let up on my pain. Yelling at my soldiers to get things done was suddenly a difficult shrewd chore, and that alone spurred my ruthlessness.

I began to bleed. Not the pesky monthly kind; I mean from everywhere. More than once I was woken up by my own sputtering to find that blood was flowing out of my mouth and every other orifice in my body like scarlet rivers. I shouted and yelled for help, knowing for sure that this wasn't right. My servants stand at the door like the dumbasses they were and just watch in horror as I would try to rise from my crimson soaked bed only to fall on all fours, blood dripping out of every hole, even my eyes. Finally Dark Ace shoved his way to my room and stepped forward, not caring that my blood was getting all over him. I can still feel the fibers of the towel he held to my mouth as he snarled at them to fetch the doctors and scientists.

Scans. Scans, scans, and more scans. They found a hematological neoplasm in my blood, but they didn't have a name for it. Only a few cases in the entire world had been reported. When it came to chronic diseases, the Atmos was a very healthy place. Either you had a cold, or something that would kill you in three days. They traced the malady back to two possibilities; my genetic makeup, and the enzymes that were placed in my sphere in which I grew.

Discussions and meetings, consultants and tests. Pin pricks and cotton balls stuffed in places I never want to mention.

Finally I had enough.

"Listen you shit heads," I hissed one day, nearly leaping out of my bed and dislodging the needles in my arms. I grabbed one of the scientists by the cuff of their immaculate white coat.

"If you don't find out what's wrong with me as well as a cure in the next twenty four hours, I'll throw you, you, and the rest of your little science pricks into the furnace."

It was a slightly empty threat; instead of twenty four hours, they took three days. I was much too weak and in pain to do anything about it, or even order someone else to do anything about it.

Still, after that I don't think I've ever seen Cyclonia's science department work faster.

But I was still stuck in bed. With nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs. And maybe scowl at Dark Ace each time he came in with a smirk on his face asking me if I wanted him to read me a story.

And the pain, ohthe _pain_. It was unbearable. When no one was in the room changing my sheets or bedpan or whatever, I moaned uncontrollably. My hands gripped my hair, tearing it out by the follicles. My bloodshot eyes rolled back into my head. I couldn't move my pinky toe without wincing.

A leading scientist came into my room three days later with a shit eating grin that he did a poor job in hiding. He must have thought he deserved some kind of prize for whatever he was about to divulge.

"Master Cyclonis, I think we may have figured out how to counter the disease."

"Well, spill it." I said. "And don't use that fancy lingo that I know you all love. Just give it to me straight."

"Okay…well, we're basically going to hook up tubes to your medulla oblongata in several treatment sessions, stimulate the most important functions of your brain so that they in turn do the same to your body, and hopefully they will cancel out the sickness in time."

Well, I hope he was proud of himself. Because I was going to knock him down as many times as I could. Whatever it took to get me better.

"'In time'? How long is this supposed to take?"

"Well…it's not really a cure, just a form of treatment. So it will need to be…continuous. And each session will take a few weeks or so."

"A few _weeks?!"_ My naturally low voice almost cracked. As usual he nearly cowered in fear. Even as a bedridden patient, I was still damn capable of instilling fear in my cohorts.

"Please, Master. It's actually quite miraculous-"

"Get the fuck out."

He did.

Because I never have to repeat myself.

It was the only thing the bastards came up with, though, so I had no choice but to comply. I wasn't ready to die yet, and there was no way I was going to stay in my bedroom until I kicked the bucket in my sleep.

They brought me, all bundled up in my familiar blackish purple cloak to test the Medullary Function Enhancer for the first time. Although I'd never say so, it was an amazing sight to behold. It was a giant black pod with a compartment for the patient to fit inside. Even I had to admit that this was an incredible bit of engineering, planned and built in three days no less. They were powered by my specialty; the Enhancer stones. The ones I had spent days of back breaking sleepless hours to harmonize.

They prepared me for the treatment session. I would be unconscious for weeks. Two tubes would be imbedded into my brain stem, sending slight electrical currents and through the neurological stimulation my body will react to my brain's signals and try to purge the disease. There was a chance of vomiting blah blah blah risk of hair loss blah blah blah.

Then they asked if I had any questions.

I shrugged and said, "Let's get this over with."

I was placed on the cold surface of yet another bed I was to be confined to, and ignored the aches and pains in doing so. They were about to insert the tubes into my spinal cord, and suddenly I was afraid.

They all knew that I would never say I was afraid, but it was definitely apparent that I was.

The Dark Ace put his hands on both sides of my face, trying to draw my attention away from the tubes that were aiming closer and closer to the soft skin of my neck. He must have felt me trembling.

"Don't pay attention to them. Look at me." He said.

I tried my best to do so. But then I closed my eyes tight and held in a whimper.

They stuck me, tickling and scratching an agonizing itch underneath my skin that wasn't even supposed to be there, and I felt it nudge up against my spinal cord. It wasn't painless, but the warmth of Dark Ace's hands on my icy cheeks kept the smarting at bay.

The drowsiness kicked in rather quickly, and I lay down on my back. The last thing I saw was Dark Ace's agonizingly fond expression before I was enclosed in a dreamless void.

I don't believe I will ever be able to aptly describe how horrible it is to be in the middle of an MFE session.

It's a sleep in which you're completely conscious-completely coherent. You're all alone in the pod, caged by the cogent darkness. You sit in one spot the entire time, afraid that if you wander you'll fall through an invisible hole in the abyss and never see daylight again. Three weeks, two weeks, five days, five months. It's never certain how long each session may be.

But in the pod, time melts into one undistinguished sequence of waiting to wake up.

-0-

The instant I broke away from sleep I could already tell it was going to be an ailing day.

I awoke with one of my arms across my forehead, feeling the blunt of the heat radiating off my head. My other hand was tangled in the thin but matted tresses of what little hair I had left. A glistening sheen of sweat covered my body, and using my small amount strength I had I threw the five comforters off of my bed that had been put on the previous night to curtail the chills. As hard as I tried with the thick blankets no longer suffocating my sticky form, I could not go back to sleep.

I have a room all to myself here. It's nice and quiet, except for the frequent beeps of the machinery used to monitor my failing health. The carefully placed chips underneath my skin allow the machines to observe what is going on inside of my body without me having to stay bed ridden or carry around one of those IV things.

Rising was slightly difficult; getting into a sitting position makes the accumulated aches from sleeping in a single position all night creep up and shoot up and down my spine. I saw a sliver of light coming through my blood red curtains. Sunshine on Terra Kiros was a rare thing to behold. But when I opened my drapes to look at it I drew back and shielded my constantly dilated sensitive eyes. I couldn't enjoy a sunny day without being reminded of the inevitable even without being all doped up on my numerous medications.

Picking up the same clothes I wore yesterday; a black tank top and dirty denim jeans, I dressed slowly. I looked around for my black cloak I was almost never seen without, but then I remembered a few days ago the way I fought tooth and nail with Piper when she said she had to wash the bloodstains and germs out of it.

I thought about showering, but last time I took one, several clumps of hair came out and ever since then I've been hesitant to do it again. Eventually my body odor would force me to, but for now I'd rather wallow in my own stink than create another bald spot. There was once a mirror that hung near my bedroom door. A few months ago I knew it had to go. I already knew that I looked like something that lives underneath a bridge feeding off of society's scraps. I didn't need my reflection to give me a recap.

The mansion was long and winding. I liked it that way. My fallen fortress was a snaking series of tunnels, but not in the way that this one was. On the walls were beautiful wooden carvings of angels. I didn't believe in the existence of angels, but I thought they were lovely anyways. Instead of an apocalyptic red essence radiating from the structure like the old place, it was pale and blue. Soft, calming. Somehow mournful. With my arms wrapped around my torso I walked barefoot down the stone cold stairway. This place used to be abandoned; it was dusty, and probably full of asbestos. Piper's extensive cleaning and care did away with the grimy interior. In time, I found myself calling it home.

Eventually I came down to the tallest hallway in the mansion, which also contained the largest room. That room was the lab. Piper's sanctuary. And my yearning.

I wished very much to be the one in that tall chair at the stainless steel desk, looking at the crystallized filaments that made the objects that I secretly pined over. I made my way closer to the door of the lab, which was open a crack. Inside I heard her voice.

"C'mon…c'mon…"

On the verge of something, no less.

And then I heard a loud blast and a trail of black smoke coming from the crack in the door, as well as a snarled expletive.

"_Shit!"_

I smirked. Sweet, sweet music.

I walked over to the tall wooden door and pushed it further with the back of my hand, only to have a thicker cloud of smoke hit me in the face. I coughed violently and waved my hand trying to clear the air. When it dissipated, I saw Piper sitting in the coveted giant blue chair with her head between her knees. A blackened burnt slimy…thing stuck to the steel desk.

"What happened?" I asked, barely masking my amusement as I leaned my shoulder up against a wall and crossed my arms.

She didn't answer right away. Her breathing was deep and she kept groaning in irritation. Finally, she sat upright, her long blue hair covered in black soot-like dust falling below her collar bone. There were black smudges on her cheeks as well. I pursed my lips to keep from laughing; she looked adorably hindered.

"The enzymes from a paralyzer and an enhancer." She said, not meeting my eyes.

I uncrossed my arms, walked over to the desk, and touched the tip of my finger to the hardened black mess.

"What're you, crazy?" I said, sweeping my finger down into the mess. "A paralyzer would cancel out the enhancer. Completely immobilize its effects at the least."

I scratched off a small piece of the black debris with my fingernail and held it in my hand.

"At the _very _least."

Piper sighed again. I was normally quite ruthless with my critiques; this was me being lenient. Perhaps this time she was beating herself up over the failure more than I this time.

"What were you trying to do?" I asked.

She opened the desk drawer and took out a scraper, much like the one she used to grate frost off the windshield of her heliscooter after a frozen night, and began to chip off bits of the black blob.

"I thought if I could harmonize them both, the paralyzer would destroy your deteriorating cells and the enhancer would increase the healthy ones."

I gave her a hard stare. Not out of disappointment. More like out of the sheer brilliance of her way of thinking and the fact that she was using her skills to try and find a cure for my disease. I wasn't planning on the latter; I was just going to teach Piper my techniques and use the MFE chamber until I finally perished. Piper was a strange girl. Even before the years of living alone in the mansion with her, she never failed to surprise me.

Five years it's been since we came to this place, since I first cringed at what I used to think was distasteful décor on the internal structure of the mansion.

I'm sure she hated it just as much as I did. I was secretly thankful for her help during the raid, but I masked my gratefulness with my initial refusal to live under the same roof, let alone teach her how to be as great as she could be when it came to crystal manipulation. My first thought was that she was already good at it-why would she need me? Then I would reason, reminding myself that I had an almost divine knowledge of what she wanted to dedicate her life doing. I was book smart, and after a while I learned from pages and black text how to use my intuition. But Piper? Pure untainted talent.

Her idea had promise. And that worried me.

We started cleaning up the mess together without talking. Never in a million years did I think that I would be able to achieve a comfortable silence with the likes of an ex Storm Hawk. After we threw away the black material that resembled hard charcoal she sat exhaustedly in the blue chair again, draping her long brown neck against the back of it. Her face looked at the ceiling, but her eyes were studying me even from their awkward position.

"You feeling okay?" She asked.

I both hated and liked it when she asked me that. I disliked feeling that I had to be asked at all, but it also gave me the strange sensation that perhaps I was normal. Or at least had the potential to be. No one ever asked me that when I was Master Cyclonis. I was a mad hatter with a terminal sickness; of course I wasn't okay, why bother asking.

"Fine." I said.

Worst lie ever.

Like she'd really believe anything of that sort when I had patches of my scalp out for the world to see or when I wake up covered in sweat and blood from hemorrhaging every other day. I looked, and felt, constantly tired. It gave me a sick feeling in my stomach; we both knew I needed another session again.

When I whisked away the thought of another session the sick feeling didn't go away, however. In fact, it rose. To the top of my stomach, through my thin esophagus that barely allowed me to have an appetite, up into the back of my _mouth…_

It must have been written all over my face that something was wrong. Piper stood up immediately as I put one arm on the desk to support myself and the other cradled my churning stomach. I clenched my eyes shut, willing the vomit to go back down where it belonged, but it wouldn't listen.

"I'm gonna barf, Piper…" I rasped.

"Hold on, hold on…" She said calmly, although she hurriedly searched for something in the deep recesses of the desk.

"Hurry!" I said, my tongue flopping around my mouth as sour and numbing saliva began to slip from between my lips. A true sign that I was about to toss my cookies.

Finally she produced a pipe and some green mince that looked like pencil shavings.

"This alright?" She asked. I nodded frantically.

She took a lighter and lit it quickly, hastily offering it to me. I grabbed the pipe and breathed in like a madwoman. I blew out the smoke and felt my insides contract again, but only because of the smoky inhalant. I took another hit. The vomit was thankfully receding, and my stomach was content at the presence of the calming herb.

Piper sighed in relief as I visibly seemed to recover from an intense wave of nausea.

I liked this herb. It made the pain dim quite a bit, and it helped my stomach aches. It used to make me dizzy, but not anymore. Piper came back with it one day when she went to get supplies, using a chroma to mask her identity. Even with her long hair that no longer stood strait up, she was just too recognizable. I smoked the herb, started giggling uncontrollably (earning a raised eyebrow and smirk from Piper), and almost begged her to get it every time she went out. I've been smoking it frequently ever since.

"You're sick again." She said.

I didn't say anything; just silently held the pipe to my lips.

"You've been having a relapse for several weeks now. I think it's time for another session in the pod."

Still quiet, I agreed with her. Bitterly, and I narrowed my eyes at the thought; but I agreed with her.

"You're looking for a cure." I said all of a sudden, holding the pipe in between my brittle teeth.

"Well…yeah." She said almost dejectedly, as if she thought I would snub the idea and make fun of her for wasting her time.

Part of me _did _think she was wasting her time. I fought my sickness that whole time to teach her to fulfill her _own _destiny - not interfere with mine. She had the ability to fly with her skills, but never flew from the protective surface of her ledge. And for the past five years I had been trying to push her off. All of this cure nonsense sounded like another ploy to keep being attached to me. If I kept living, I could keep teaching. I didn't approve of that at all.

But I guess I was flattered.

"When do you want to do it?" Piper asked.

I parted my mouth to speak.

"Besides never?"

"Well in that case…" I said, smirking and rolling my eyes.

"I'm serious." She pressed, frowning.

"Let's do it tonight, for all I fucking care." I said gruffly.

"You sure?"

No, fucktard, I didn't mean it.

"Don't I get a say in whether to have one at all?" I said, turning away from the dark young woman and staring out the window. The sun was in the middle of the sky by now.

"If you don't get treated, the disease will spread again…"

"And since when has that ever been news to me?"

"But you'll _die_!" Piper said anxiously.

"Then so be it. Dying is natural. It happens all the time."

Piper looked at me, and for once when it seldom did, it made me uncomfortable.

"You're hopeless." She said, and walked brusquely out of the lab.

I sighed heavily and my eyebrows knitted themselves together to make a rather ugly expression. I was now alone, the smell of her failed experiment still wafting about in the room; a remnant of her 'righteous' inclination. It wasn't that I was tired of living. But perhaps if things had turned out differently, I wouldn't have ended up this way. Maybe if my mother hadn't died under my father's orders I could have been born a healthy human being, able to suck on a tit like nature had intended.

Fighting for the expansion of your empire is easier than fighting for your right to live. And the second one didn't have too many perks so far.

I was sick of fighting. I admit she should understand that. I could try calling her selfish, but that's not right. Piper's anything but selfish.

What I primarily couldn't believe was that she left her squadron in the first place. She told me time and time again that they let her do what she did, that they understood, but that has to be at least halfway full of bullshit. They had to hate that she left for someone like me, that she was spending her time alone with the most merciless dictator in the history of the Atmos. To be honest, I kind of hated it too. She had everything: Love, challenges, friendship, a duty. And she left it all behind just because she thought I could teach her some new tricks.

I could only imagine what her teammates thought about it. Their rage towards me after finding out their cherished Piper was leaving for what seemed like forever must have been positively ceaseless. How could she do that to people who had been so good to her? I may not have liked what they stood for, but they were still good people. I can't hate good people. It's something not even I can do.

My teachings could only take Piper so far. The rest was up to her.


	2. Piper

a/n: What else can I say about this chapter other than that it's probably one of the weirdest things I've ever written. I'm not sure if readers will find it weird...but I certainly do. Piper has always been incredibly ambitious in my eyes, but never did even _I _think that she would do this. It was strange to write, it was strange to reread, and it was strange to edit. Oh well...hopefully its up to par at least.

Before I forget, there's a huge, and I mean HUGE homage to Mariphasa Hecatene's fic 'Green Star' a ways down. One of the most amazing SH fics I've ever read.

I present the events leading up to Piper's wacko decision. Enjoy (maybe).

-0-

_**Piper**_

Destiny is a very funny thing. It's confusing too. It lets you think that you're on the path you should be, and then it lets you think about something, _anything, _that could make that untrue. Seldom do I stray from whatever roads I take in my life, a fact that I used to hold up with pride. But now I have soiled it. It needed to be done; I try to reason with my conflicted decision. I had to find out the truth about my abilities and finally open my wings. Well even though it had to be done, I still felt stabs of pain in my chest cavity whenever I thought about it.

It started with a daydream, I believe. My harmonizing was going very badly that day, and all throughout the hours various explosions and curses echoed from my room; results of failures. I was aggravated beyond belief. When Aerrow came in and tried to nudge me back into my normally diligent work, I gave him one look and he left. I needed a break, and that was exactly what I was going to have.

I left my room and walked out onto the deck, ignoring the chilling vapor that licked at my skin. I stared out into the water colored emptiness and questioned my capacity for my job for the millionth time. What in the Atmos was I doing? What made me think that I was even cut out for this sort of thing? Why did everything I do have to be trial and error? I was tired of the fiascos and the smoky blowouts that happened nearly every day.

The others were people that for once I could not confide in. If I went to one of them with my current problem at hand, they would automatically tell me that I was a wonderful crystal harmonizer and that I shouldn't worry. I didn't want to hear things like that anymore. Sure, they were encouraging at first, but they weren't what I needed. It wasn't a lack of motivation; I had more than enough of that. The Cyclonian Empire was gearing up for a rather large invasion. And after years of fighting them we knew that they always got quiet and seemingly docile whenever they were about to invade.

There was so much work to do…

Crystal manipulation. Tactics. Plans. Missions. Reconnaissance. Undercover. My brain was so full of it that those days I felt it would explode and everything would come out. I had to be good. No, I had to be the best. Or else Atmos would fall.

Master Cyclonis was good with crystals.

As the blonde charlatan I quickly grew to love in the short time we spent together she exhibited a rather large amount of knowledge, making me feel at home with both her and myself. Although one of the most hurtful, it was the blessed day I found out I wasn't a loner in what I do. And then in an instant, the mask disappeared into the foreboding cloud of black smoke that was the Cyclonian dictator. Since that day I couldn't even compare other times in my life to how I felt then; betrayed, gullible, stupid, and inadequate.

Cyclonis caused all of it. And the events still toiled inside of me whenever her face came to mind.

The idea of me training under Cyclonis was absolutely heinous. As if anyone would let me do such thing without obstructing my path. The entire Atmos was waiting for the day that they could see the dark haired girl hanging from the tallest tree by the neck. If they heard that one of the squadron's members, dedicated to protecting them, actually _chose _to learn from the fascist, they would want them dead as much as Cyclonis herself.

It started as a thought.

One that, no matter how hard I tried, I could not seem to bury.

-0-

On the day of the undercover mission, Aerrow gave one of his quick and easy 'we can accomplish anything' speeches. I smiled and nodded in approval at his words, but as we all ran to the hanger for our vehicles, I gulped loudly about every ten seconds. The thoughts and wishes of an odious kind had been persisting. All I ever thought about was Cyclonis and all of the ridiculously useful and sinful things she could teach me. My mouth shamefully watered at the ideas of both rancor and wonder I could possibly extract from that criminally clever mind of hers.

We had all dressed in our spare Cyclonian uniforms. Staffs, goggles, suits, the works. Over the numerous missions on the terra, we came to acquire many resources that would allow us to go undetected. Since Cyclonia was lying so low, we thought it best for us to do the same. Whenever we had a mission on terra Cyclonia, we never destroyed anything and we never fought. We did our best to stay out of everyone's way and we rarely spoke.

One thing we did do was snoop.

And this time was no different. We arrived through the common hanger, nodding to our 'fellow' talons and heading strait for the winding corridors of the Cyclonian fortress. Our task was to look for anything, _anything _about what they were planning for the future. A quiet Cyclonia was just as dangerous as a busy one; its silence only meant more numerous and powerful strikes on the people of Atmos. We had to work quickly.

As mentioned, it was key that we stay out of sight, for the disguises were only for the stickiest situations. Each corner we turned was swift and sound, the three of us only moving after Aerrow's head peeked around to the other side and motioned us forward. It was actually quite uneventful; we were finding nothing resembling plans to Cyclonia's expansion, and we were wasting a lot of energy not being caught instead of actually looking for evidence of an invasion.

The hallway split into a fork and we stopped briefly.

"Junko and Finn, go that way. Piper and I will go this way." Aerrow said.

"And be careful." He added.

"C'mon, Aerrow. Aren't we always?" Finn said without a smile. Funnily enough, it was rare to see him jovial those days.

We separated, and Aerrow and I walked with our shoulders touching much of the way. It was quiet, besides the clinging sounds of iron being clashed or the machinery working underneath us which had terrible crystal fuel exhaust.

"Aerrow?"

"Hmm?" He said, still looking ahead.

Should I ask him? Should I confide?

"…Is Cyclonis going to be killed when she's captured?" I asked him.

"Probably. She's the primary target right now." He said.

"…"

What could I say to such a casualness gyrating around the death of Cyclonis?

Aerrow sensed my hesitation. I think he sensed it back on the _Condor _too. But like the ridiculously understanding human being that he was, he often waited for the problem to designate itself rather than nose around where he thought he didn't belong quite yet.

"I'm sure it wont be too bad, Piper. As much as a lot of us would like it to, her death can't be filled with torture."

That wasn't what I was worried about. If Cyclonis died at all, my hope for a teacher would die with her.

"Here, look." Aerrow said as we came by a large and heavily locked door.

"I wonder what they're trying to hide." He said, glancing at me.

I nodded, and took my staff and jammed it into the numerous heavy locks. They shriveled up from the heat of my crystals, and Aerrow pried the door open.

It was spotless, but one breathe through my nose and I realized that much success and failure had occurred in this room. There were vials and beakers, stove burners and crates holding who knows what. Shelves upon shelves lined the walls, all holding up books of every size I could imagine. From where we stood I read but a few titles on the spines. _To Know the Crystal_, _The Hidden Voice of the Solaris,__Hard Palms: Molding Crystal Shapes to Suit your Needs__…_

Goodness.

It was Cyclonis's crystal lab. In which she did everything; designing, reading, experiments, inventions. I was as close to the holy grail of my guilty desires as I could get.

Aerrow was thinking along the same lines, but for a different purpose all together.

"Bingo." He said, grinning like the sly fox that he could morph into perfectly.

We rummaged carefully but thoroughly, and I had the urge to cry for the fact that I didn't bring a container of any sort with me so I could stash some of those bountiful books. Her desk had instruments I had only seen pictures of, and some that I had no idea what they did. Aerrow was looking for proof of a meditated attack; I was looking for anything that would stem my desire to learn under Cyclonis and learn anything about her techniques to keep for myself. After all, the entire fantasy was out of the question. I hated her. I hated the way it made me feel when her chroma wore off and I saw her pale scheming face through the one I had come to call a friend. I had to keep all of that in mind; she was the enemy. Plain and simple.

I opened one of the black marble cabinets and dozens of pieces of cobalt parchment came tumbling out. Quickly turning them all over, I saw that they were blueprints. Not all of them, though. Some were long intricate essays with her name signed at the bottom of the paper in fancy script. Others were just chaos on a page, like someone experiencing hallucinations decided to pick up a pen. And several were just large lists of materials and products that I didn't really pay close attention to.

Aerrow came over and helped me sort through them. His movements were getting more hurried by the second. He said nothing, but I knew him well enough to know that he was getting antsy. He got these feelings that told him when to be ready to run, and I took note of that. In the meantime, until he said it was time to high tail it out of here; I was going to look to my heart's desire.

I came across a blueprint that had a very peculiar design on it. Through all of the pencil marks and small notes pointing to certain parts of the contraption, it looked like a pod-like machine. I read the cliff notes in various corners of the blue print. Hoses carrying medicine would be hooked up to the patient…patient dormant for unknown amount of time…

I raised my eyebrow at the next one: would purge the disease until the next _relapse_?

Who the hell was this for?

"Piper, look at this." Aerrow said, handing me what looked like another list among the pile of papers.

I skimmed over it. Hundreds of medicines were listed on the page. Among them were a few that I vaguely recognized: Chemotherapeutic Solvent, Hematological Suppositories, Electro Magnetic Foot Baths, and (I cringed when I saw the last one before I pulled my eyes away) Bone Marrow Transplantation Serum. My face tensed in confusion and curiosity. What was all of this for? _Who _was it for?

"Sounds like Cyclonis is sick." Aerrow said simply.

I swallowed.

If the Atmosians didn't finish her off, whatever she was inflicted with would. Medicines and inventions like this weren't usually stocked to prevent the common cold.

Part of me tried to reason that this medicine and the pod could have been for anyone. A sickly squadron of Talons; the Dark Ace, Ravess…any of them. But somehow, I knew that it was her who was ill. The last time I saw her in person was two years ago after she threw off her cute blue eyed freckle covered disguise to give me an unpleasant surprise.

"There's nothing else in here. We should move on."

I wasn't ready to leave. I wanted to tell him to leave me behind in this treasury of withheld information and that I would catch up. Wishes were just that, wishes. Eventually Aerrow grabbed my arm firmly, meaning no harm of course, and yanked me up.

"C'mon Piper. Take those if you want. We gotta go."

I nodded, and grabbed the blue prints and other invaluable pages and stuffed them under my arm. We tried to leave the lab as quietly as we could, but things were suddenly much busier than when we first arrived. The pleasantries of the missions nowadays, however, were that we perfected the art of arriving and leaving without an ounce of exposure. The Storm Hawks may have been unorthodox; but on what seemed like the constant eve of a full out war, we couldn't risk screwing up and blowing our cover.

In the corridors there were crowds of Talons making their way to whatever duties they had to attend to. Their shoulders brushed mine, and their hands accidentally swept across certain areas of my torso; like they didn't have a clue that I wasn't one of them. We infiltrated Cyclonia many times in those past two years, but I don't think either me or Aerrow ever got used to walking in such closeness with those who we would be fighting in earnest very soon.

The common hanger was a blessed sight. I was tired of being in the sweaty sulpher-smelling hallways of the fortress. I got on the back of Aerrow's Switchblade-disguised Skimmer and held onto his waist as we flew off into the dark gathering clouds. The blueprints were still tightly at my side.

We got to the _Condor_, and I immediately holed myself up in my room, studying the lists and blueprints with my nose against the page. Cyclonis was sick. She was in pain. I felt this scattered the popular theory of Cyclonia planning a mass invasion. They were quiet because they were truly were vulnerable, not because they were scheming.

There was a knock.

"Hey." Aerrow said, poking his head in through my door.

"Did you radio Junko and Finn?" I asked.

"I did. And they're coming. They said they dug up a lot of dirt. How're those prints?"

"They're…intriguing. Cyclonis must have one heck of an illness. I only recognize about five of the medicines listed."

I pulled out the blueprint of the pod.

"And these drawings…this pod looks insane."

Arrow said nothing, just came and looked over my shoulder at the design.

I sighed heavily, tossing the papers on my already cluttered desk and putting my index finger and thumb on the bridge of my nose to massage the cartilage. I felt Aerrow's hand bring itself up to gently rest on my shoulder, and neither of us said anything for a little bit.

He had always been my leader in many senses; a friend too. Fleeting memories of us in the dirt as children flickered in my mind. Even back then he was handsome as can be. There were woods behind the house's our families used to live in, and he would always stare at their looming obscurity. He wanted to go in, but I pulled my legs up to my chest and shook my head in defiance. A childish kiss on the cheek instantly had my insides the consistency of butter, and soon he was leading me by my wrist into the forest. Going in there really wasn't too bad; kind of pretty actually. We came to a tiny thicket where some rays of sunshine came through, and we both stared upwards.

To this day, I knew the value of caution and prudence, but Aerrow was the one to teach me how to love adventure and to do what makes me happy.

Back in the present, I put my hand over Aerrow's which was still on my shoulder.

"They're not planning an invasion." I said quietly.

"What do you mean?" He asked, and his brow tensed slightly.

"They're vulnerable. They're not going to invade." I said.

"What makes you say that?"

"Aerrow, Cyclonis controls everything, _everything _that her forces do. In the last year or so there's barely been a peep out of them at all. And I don't believe it's because they're planning something. I think it's because Cyclonis is so sick."

Aerrow stared at me and considered what I said. I spoke again:

"It's been more or less decided that we're raiding Cyclonia by the end of the year."

"Isn't that a good thing that there won't be much resistance?" He asked.

"Sure. Like taking candy from a baby."

Aerrow's hand slipped away, and he turned to leave. But before he did he said:

"Piper…it needs to be done. No matter what."

The empire needed to fall. It just wasn't an option. If it didn't, it would eventually turn the entire planet into a slave factory. Everyone would starve, and there would be no hope for reformation of the peaceful ways. There was no question that we would all die.

My eyebrow rose slowly at the thought. The _empire _needed to fall. But according to my current train of thought, perhaps the empress didn't.

-0-

The mechanics of the pod became quite simple the more I looked over them. I couldn't get such an invention out of my head; it was very compact, but it looked like it could only be built by a team of highly trained technicians. Only in my imagination could I see what the real thing must have looked like. It was hard to keep thinking like this with an unstoppable offensive attack mounting on our part. Naturally the Storm Hawks would take part in it; that was a given. Everyone's mouths were probably watering at the verity that soon Cyclonia would be nothing more than a barren crumbled wasteland of what used to be a great domain.

I knew I wanted to see such an oppressive era end, I really did. Nearly all of our pasts were linked with Cyclonia in a chain of bloody horrific events. But I kept thinking about Cyclonis and her illness; what she must be going through. My mind that couldn't help racing as I thought about a feeble Cyclonis who sat huddled in her bedroom with the blinds shut, willing her body to fight her disease.

I wanted to help her.

I wanted her to help me.

But what was driving either of those desires?

Was it a selfish whim?

I didn't like to think so. I wanted it to be because I knew my calling in life, and back then I thought that there was no other alternative but to learn from someone who had the same zealous infatuation with it.

Those days I ran my hand through my hair in worry. Scared that my teammates would know what kind of shocking plan I was mixing up in the aspiring pulp of my brain. To build my own pod was an option. An extremely difficult road to take. One person could not easily overcome such a feat, especially someone like me who had other duties to take care of. Time was an issue. Being caught was an issue. _Location _was an issue. I popped open my box of maps of every single terra in the Atmos. I checked the Timepulse beacon. About five hundred ticks away was Terra Kiros; lightly forested, fairly ignored. Even toxic in some areas, which contributed grandly to the lack of census. And surprisingly enough, it had not been taken over by Cyclonia; a distant but neighboring terra. A trail of nervous saliva slid down my throat as I gulped noisily. It was worth a shot.

On my way to the hanger, I was stopped by Finn, who apparently just got back as I was going out.

"Where are _you _off to? We just got done with a mission and you wanna go _out _again?" He said, the corner of his upper lip rising in question.

My breath got caught in my throat. _Don't freeze up…_I said to myself quickly, and the words came out smoothly again. Well, as smooth as I could have made them.

"I just…need to get some fresh air. You know, nothing like a relaxing ride after a mission, right?"

He must have noticed the difference in my demeanor, because he still looked slightly confused. But lucky for me, my wheat haired sharpshooter could be quite dense. Finn shrugged.

"Alright…just don't do anything stupid, okay?"

I narrowed my eyes and smirked. "No, that's your job."

After showing me his middle finger, Finn stepped passed me, and I walked to the hanger quietly sighing in relief. Since when was Finn the one giving me advice to be careful? I thought maybe it was an omen that perhaps I was doing something really, _really _wrong. The ride to Kiros was uneventful, but the entire time I was on the keen lookout for anything approaching. I was doing it; I was actually doing it. The guilt melted away and was replaced with sheer excitement that I might actually succeed in this crazy dream I had.

Kiros was solemn and desolate. From the time I arrived to when I left, the clouds stayed in one place the entire time, making everything like a constant evening. I trekked on my heliscooter into the forests as long as I could although I made sure I could find my way back to the edge of the terra. Finally, I came to a clearing with a large gray manor smack dab in the middle. Old and worn; abandoned.

Perfect.

Even…pretty.

I scouted, and I found a good place to start. We would never be bothered, or even be found.

Kneeling down, my caps touched the damp dirt and the moisture soaked through my blue and orange suit. I could still see the mansion through the tall brown grass, and seeds were getting blown into my hair. The clouds were gathering extremely close, and I knew that as gray as they looked the whole time, they would soon release their rain. It was time for me to go. I had found it. I had _found _it. A refuge for me and the one who would hopefully help me discover myself.

I got back on my heliscooter. I needed tools. I needed material. I needed to fill in the holes of this plan.

There were six more months until the raid; six months that I had to use to build the pod all by myself. It was only going to be one of many challenges. It wouldn't be a problem for me to understand the directions, but being a mechanic was not one of my strengths. I wasn't like Stork, who could take two screws and turn them into something to shave your legs with.

Going back to the _Condor, _I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I was ecstatic about my discovery, but being surrounded by the people who I've held as close to my heart as anyone or anything can get made me want to vomit. I had secrets to keep, now.

I had to tell them eventually.

-0-

Like the good Storm Hawk I was, I aided my squadron in whatever they needed me to. I formulated plans and I contributed to anything regarding the information Finn and Junko gathered on the last undercover mission. I was Piper; crystal harmonizing, smart, finely honed Piper. Under the surface there was the nagging sensation of knowing that I had to go back to Kiros every week to build the pod. The feeling that each time I left, I was betraying something, but it was hard to tell what it was sometimes.

It was getting more difficult to sneak away. It was obvious that Aerrow was getting suspicious. His face often stared at me with a look that I couldn't pinpoint easily. Like somehow he knew what was going on, and he was trying to coax me to come forth and tell him the truth. The truth would break him, though.

Or break me.

Each day I knew I was getting closer to finally digging the jewels that I knew lay buried inside of me; the talent I knew I possessed but couldn't access it alone. Of course, with the progress, I was drawing farther from my friends. From simple things like missing dinner, to being gone from dawn to dusk and stealing the materials that I needed, it was two months before the invasion. And I was skating on thin ice.

It was a Wednesday, and I went to the hanger. Once a week; it _always _had to be once a week. If no one came across me I would leave and be back when the sun started to set. I had everything I needed packed into the side compartments of my heliscooter; I was ready to go.

Aerrow was already there, scrubbing the floors and making them gleam.

I stopped abruptly, but my chance to turn and walk in the other direction never seemed to exist in the first place. He noticed me, and looked up.

"Hey there." A common greeting, but it held no warmth like it usually did.

'H-hey, Aerrow." I said.

"Going somewhere?" He asked, and he stood.

I shook my head.

"You've been away a lot."

"…"

"Care to tell me where?"

"Do I have to?"

Aerrow frowned. "Well…no, I guess. But it's really weird to have you coming and going when and where you please, especially when we're supposed to be keeping a low profile. It's not safe out there, Piper."

"I know. I can take care of myself."

I turned to leave, but he caught me by the wrist and I looked at him with wide eyes. He was persistent.

"Please…tell me what's going on."

I glanced down, unable to look at his pleading green eyes for long. They glimmered with whatever emotion he was feeling, and right then I saw utmost concern. So much that it hurt me to look at him.

"N-nothing's going on."

Aerrow sighed, let go of my wrist, but gently grasped my shoulders. We were older now. A few years ago that kind of contact would be strange, but he was my leader and my friend; I could allow it.

"Don't shut me out. It's the worst time."

"You'll hate me."

"You could turn into a Talon and I wouldn't hate you, Piper."

I couldn't help but hopelessly chuckle, even when the faintest sign of tears were building up behind the wall of my lower eyelid. It was a funny thought, but I knew it wasn't true.

"I've been going to Kiros." I said, looking at his upper body. His shoulder. The bridge of his nose. Anywhere but in the eye.

"What for?"

"I'm…building something."

"What're you building?"

I bit my lip. I wasn't ready for our friendship to end; but by this point I felt that I had no choice.

"A replica of the pod for Cyclonis's sickness. On the day of the invasion I'm taking her with me to Kiros."

Aerrow let go of my shoulders, and took a single slow and dumbfounded step away.

"Piper…"

_Don't say my name like that…_

"What _for_?"

"To learn about my dream."

"I can't allow this."

"Aerrow, I need to-"

"No. End of story."

He was hurting me. I was hurting him. Two walking life forms of pain in the same room like this couldn't be a good mix.

"I'm going to do this. Whether you support me or not." I said.

"I thought being a Storm Hawk was your dream." Aerrow said heatedly.

I said nothing. It was. And it came true. But in my mind, it was what I was, not who. I belonged in a sea of raw crystals just waiting to have their energy harnessed. And I was meant to do it flawlessly. That dream couldn't be completed here.

Aerrow spoke again. "Piper, you can't do this to me. To _us._ We _need _you."

"And you'll have me. Only when the raid is over will I leave."

"Cyclonis has ruined our homes. Our families. She has blood on her hands that can't be washed away."

"I'm going, Aerrow."

He stared at me with such anger. He wanted to hit me, or hug me. Either way I was afraid of him now. But I didn't back down.

"Tell the others if you want." I said quietly.

He shook his head slowly, not an ounce of the fury in his eyes lessening.

"No…_you're_ going to tell them." And he left.

And I sank to my knees, covered my face with my hands, and cried. The tears soaked the webbing of my fingers, and my snot ran and smeared against my dark skin. Aerrow hated me. And soon they'd all hate me. All because I had to do what I believed in.

-0-

Another vague amount of time passed, and Aerrow hadn't spoken to me since that day in the hanger. Not talking to him was torture, but I understood why he was acting like this. I thought I deserved it too, and that it was necessary for attaining what I wanted; what I had been working so hard to get for those last grueling months.

It was less than a month before the invasion. The pod was nearly complete. Everyone on our side would go and wipe out as much as they could on the Cyclonian grounds, hopefully leaving it in ruins, and after putting on a good show Cyclonis would have no choice but to leave with me. It would be between running away with an ex Storm Hawk, or staying and getting captured by the people who I used to fight alongside without question.

On the day I chose to tell everyone, I first went to Junko's room early in the morning. If anyone would have an outburst of tears, it would be him. Better to get it over with.

This time, it was way more than tears. I drew back and shielded my face, fearing for my life after I told Junko about what was going to happen. Normally upon hearing bad news he would get glassy eyed and would cry within seconds. But this time he stared at me like I had murdered someone. He wrecked everything except for me, and I had realized just why he was so resistant to expressing himself violently. It was ugly. I thought he was going to kill me. And by the time he was done, he knew that I thought this, and broke down just like I did after I told Aerrow.

After a few minutes of reassurance that he wasn't going to hurt me, I stepped forward with a reaching hand to touch his enormous shoulder, but he didn't allow me to. Through his sobs he said only one thing.

"Why do you have to leave?"

I left his room still trembling and clutching my sides. Wallops were frightening when they didn't have a grip on themselves.

I asked myself if this was worth it. The day progressed, my confession became known, and the doubt about my choice fluctuated. I walked down the main hallway with my shoulder deliriously rubbing against one of the walls. In a few short weeks I would be gone, possibly forever. That is, if my team didn't kill me first. But from the look of it, there was a feeling that I would die on my own from drowning on my choked guilt.

My shoulder hit ridges on the wall. I had come to the door frame of Finn's room, and it was open. I swallowed and peeked inside. He wasn't there. My body wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but I wouldn't allow that; he would be back soon, I knew it.

I never went in there unless I absolutely needed something. I stood in the doorway, staring at the number of posters and magazine clip outs adorning the walls of this room that fit his persona so well. I took one step, and tried to take in the unadulterated feel of being in Finn's room on my own accord. It wasn't without the eeriness. I hated to admit it, but it was rare that I felt anything besides irritation and disapproval towards Finn. We were so different, always were. And we often clashed like water and oil.

"Piper?"

I turned around with eyes wide as dinner plates to face Finn staring at me from the doorway.

"What are you doing in my room?"

"I needed to talk to you."

"Oh…um, okay." Finn walked further into his room. The awkwardness was clear as crystal now.

"By the way, what the hell was that racket I heard earlier?"

_That was just your best friend freaking out on me because I told him I'm leaving._

I chose not to answer that, and shrugged.

"Finn…you know the raid we're going on soon?"

"Of course. I'm gonna go trigger happy when we get there." He grinned.

I gave a half assed smile.

"You okay there?" He asked tentatively.

"After we raid Cyclonia, I'm leaving."

He looked at me, his face twisted in perplexity.

"…Where? Why?"

"To Kiros. To master crystal harmonizing."

"To _master _it? Piper, you already _are _a master."

I shook my head. "Finn, I'm going to go. I just wanted to tell you that."

His expression was nearly unreadable. It kept going back and forth between shock and anger, confusion and sadness. It wasn't every day that I could instill this kind of reaction in my wheat-haired teammate. He looked more boyish than ever, his large azure eyes glimmering with something that was making me want to cry again. I sighed. It could only get worse from then on.

"What did I do?" He asked.

"Huh?"

"What did I do to make you want to leave?"

_God…_

"You didn't do anything."

"Every time you want to leave it's always because of me." He said.

"Whatever I did I didn't mean it Piper…"

"Finn, you didn't do anyth-"

"I mean…I know I do some crazy shit sometimes, but that doesn't mean I want you to-"

"For God's sake Finn, shut up."

I looked him right in the eye.

"I'm doing this for me, and no other reason. It's what I need to do in life and I can't ignore that."

I breathed in through my nose. "Besides…I can handle your crap any day. Trust me when I say this has nothing to do with you."

"That's good to know…I guess." He said. I liked it when he felt guilty. Its not like I wanted him to hurt, I just liked it when his supercilious demeanor fell down to reveal a more sensitive side.

"Well…"

Finn? Hesitant? Goodness, this was getting weirder by the second.

"I don't want you to go."

"I know you don't, but I have to." I said.

"No, seriously. What will it take for you to stay?"

I closed my eyes tight and turned away from that blue eyed innocent face.

"Nothing, Finn."

I had to leave. I had to get away. So I walked out of the room, leaving Finn in his room to stomach the news.

It was all too much. But I had to do it all. Aerrow said I had to. How could I refuse, even when it was filled with pain? I owed it to him, to all of them, this at least.

I ran to my room and locked myself in. I turned out all of the lights and shut the blinds. I made it seem like no one was in there, and maybe the ship would start getting used to my absence. That was enough for the first half of the day. I had to let myself marinate in the facts, in the reactions of my teammates. Just soak up all of the gross reality of my decision.

Three down. One to go. And this one I was completely in the dark as to how it would turn out.

There were two more things I needed to do. Tell Stork, and get the very last part I needed for the pod. Both of which involved the green carrier pilot.

He would either not care or…care quite a lot.

Like I said, in the dark.

Later that evening when I finally emerged to finish the deed, I found him where he always was; in his respective place at the helm. My boots padded softly against the steel floor, and I was ten feet behind him, just staring at his hunched shoulders and his long green fingers with the black tips as they idly tapped the controls. He still didn't know I was there. Of course that soon changed as I saw his long triangular ears twitch and he turned around in a jolt to face me.

Stork exhaled heavily, seeing it was me. "Can I help you?" He said, obviously annoyed at me sneaking up on him like that.

"I need a large sheet of onyx titanium metal." I said, surprisingly not skipping a beat in my response even though my heart was hammering like a set of tympanis against my chest.

He raised his eyebrow. "And what in the world is this for?"

"Do I have to tell you _everything_?" I said as I frowned. Because soon, indeed I would have to.

"No, dear. I'd just like to know what my last pane of prized onyx titanium is going to be used for."

The only person with whom I included Cyclonis's name was Aerrow. The rest…vague descriptions. I chose to attempt to keep it that way.

"I'm building a regeneration chamber on Kiros."

"_Kiros_?" He said, pulling the auto pilot lever and leading me over to his locked up stash of random machinery and equipment. "So that's where you've been going so much lately. I'm sure its fun there, what with little sunlight, ghastly winds, occasional acid rain, Kirosian Measles-very contagious by the way…"

I followed him in silence, listening to him trail off into a long list of ailments that awaited my life on Kiros. I didn't care about those things; all I cared about was finishing the pod, and telling my friends what I planned to do.

"…And let's not forget the numerous black tar pits on different parts of the-Ah HA."

Stork dug his hands into a pile of parts leaning against the wall and pulled them aside, revealing an enormous thick piece of shiny metal, black as a sky without stars.

Perfect.

"Is it to your liking?" He said, brushing the back of his large green hand against the smooth surface of the metal and looking back at me for my response.

Of course it was. I had my last part. It would all be over soon. Or it would begin. I wasn't sure which. I nodded my head quickly, and my eyes began to grow reflective and full of moisture. It wouldn't be fair to cry in front of Stork; as far as I knew he wouldn't know how to comfort someone if they gave him a step by step manual. It wasn't his fault; it just wasn't in his nature.

He must have noticed. Because his eye started doing its famous twitching and his face became taut.

"What is it?"

I didn't answer right away.

"Are you sick? Oh thank Atmos we've caught it early; I'll bet it's that airborne virus that so many people are catching these days-"

"I'm not sick, Stork."

"…Oh." He said, as if that was the only thing that could ever be wrong with anyone. If it was something else, then…

I was really close to crying again. It seemed like no matter how many tears I shed today every time they came they still stung my eyes like a thousand needles.

"After the raid, I'm leaving."

After that, he just stared blankly. I had seen Stork afraid, devious, absolutely pissed...but his face was never vacant like it was now. He blinked several times, tearing his eyes away from me and staring at the wall to my side.

"For real?" He asked quietly, and I nodded.

His eyebrows raised in surprise, his whole body became a single organism of tension.

"Wasn't expecting that." He said.

"I know."

"…How come?"

"I want to be taught some things that can complete who I am." Okay…that wasn't supposed to come out that cryptic.

Stork nodded in response, but for some reason I don't think he heard me. He was still staring off into space looking more somber as the seconds went by.

"I'm sorry I have to leave. Are you mad?" I asked softly.

"No, no…I'm just surprised is all."

"Everyone else freaked, to say the least." I said.

"Well," He said, "It's not like we should have expected you to hang around us for your entire life."

He languidly ran his finger down the side of the titanium sheet, his eyes downward and once again not looking at me.

"I'd like to…but I don't feel like I can do that. Not anymore." I said.

"It's…it's okay." Stork said. He finally faced me and gave a smile that resembled more of a grimace.

"If it's your calling, who are we to stop you, right?" He mused, emitting a single half hearted laugh.

I really wasn't used to seeing him this way. He can be timid and withdrawn, and the opposite of those, but I felt like he was holding back. I had always liked Stork, even if sometimes he unknowingly made that fact waver. He wasn't unkind, just oddly rough around the edges. He was anything but perfect; maybe that's what was so interesting about him. I was going to miss everyone. No one was left out. I stepped forward and swiftly but gingerly hugged him as a friend about to depart would. At once he clammed up in surprise and he locked his arms to his side as I wrapped mine around his brawny torso. He didn't prefer to be touched; but I think we both secretly needed it.

I pulled back and smiled tearfully, looking back into his yellow eyes of unexpected consideration. I could understand why everyone was angry and sad about what I was going to do, that they hated it and thought that it was a blunder to even think about doing it. I could be modest all I wanted; I knew that they all loved me and they couldn't bear to see me go. Once again, I wondered if this was all just a mistake.

"Sometimes I think about it really hard and then all of a sudden…I don't want to leave." I said, the both of us sitting down on two piles of unused machinery.

"Do _you_ think I'm making a mistake?"

Stork looked upwards, bunching his dark eyebrows together like he was thinking about my question. Perhaps he did think it was just an insane whim.

"I remember when I was quite young, I decided that I wanted to fly. Everyone thought I was a complete loon for wanting to do something so dangerous. Even _I _did." Stork smirked. "Still do."

There was something engaging about the way he looked at the floor with near loving eyes.

"It was the only way I would ever get what I wanted."

I stared, vaguely knowing where he was going with this. And also slightly in awe that Stork was sharing _anything _from his past.

"So my point is…if you really think you're meant to do something, do it."

Stork straitened up, and must have realized a seam had burst on his protective barrier and something came leaking out. His face reverted back to his unnerving expression of feeling uncomfortable wherever he was.

"That's all." He finished, shrugging.

We both stood up, and he helped me carry the heavy piece of titanium to the hanger where I would use it to finish up the pod; my last visit to Kiros before the raid. I had made a plan of what to do when we got to Cyclonia. I ran it through my mind several times a day, however I still felt unprepared. But maybe I was supposed to feel that way.

He helped me secure the piece of metal onto my heliscooter, and even gave me an extra supply of fuel crystals in case the weight of the metal burnt me out quicker than expected. I knew Stork wasn't going to be the 'I'm going to miss you so much' kind of guy, but he didn't really have to be. That wasn't what I needed. He gave me support when I didn't have an ounce of it, and that was enough for me.

"You're going to take it tomorrow?" He asked me when we were finished. I nodded.

"Well then," He said, a small smile ghosting on his thin lips. "God speed."

-0-

The smell of raw materials came slowly but surely into the air and stung the hairs inside of my nostrils. We were so close, and I think our hearts started beating three times as fast at the same time. On the way to Cyclonia I looked to both of my sides, Finn and Junko on one side, Aerrow to my other. My leaving wasn't the only thing on their minds now; a battle was soon to commence. We were but a small particle of the cloud of other Sky Knights and their squadrons. It was tough to reach some of them and convince them to fight with us, but we managed, and hopefully we would succeed. Every squadron's carrier was with us as well, the main fire power as we would infiltrate and destroy what was inside. With the scathing air hitting my face, I thought about Stork all alone on the _Condor_; just the way he liked it.

Earlier that morning I got up at the crack of dawn as usual. When I went to the bridge everyone was already there, and I suspected that they hadn't slept at all. Shame, I thought at the time; I could have given them some of my sleeping pills; the only reason I was even able to close my eyes the previous evening.

One hour. The clock was ticking. We would meet the others at the rendezvous point and go. Our bodies were decked with more armor than we usually wore. I ran my hand over the X shaped breastplate on my chest, identical to the one that Stork owned. Today was the day that I was going to put things in motion. Whether I would succeed…well, no one ever said I wasn't inwardly trembling the entire time leading up the invasion.

In the hanger when we were getting ready to go, I could feel everyone's eyes upon me. Finn was uncharacteristically quiet; his ocean blue eyes tensed every time they met up with mine. Junko just couldn't face me at all; he just stared out the mouth of the hanger into the endless clouds, probably hoping that no one would notice the tears threatening to spill from his ducts. Stork tuned up our rides, working quickly as always, but seemed to take an extra amount of time inspecting my heliscooter and making sure it was fit for the long journey ahead of me.

And Aerrow?

He did nothing but stare.

It was an unbearable look, one that was constant and unwavering. Every single emotion he seemed to feel flitted across his eyes at lightning speed.

He really didn't want me to go.

That day in the hanger many weeks ago he was so angry and betrayed, but now the reality was here and now; I was leaving. Stork's words about doing what I was meant to do echoed in my mind, and it was all I could do to not renounce everything I had told them about me leaving the squadron. We were all getting ready to risk our lives for something we believed in, and my insides were bound tight like they had been manually twisted around each other.

Thirty minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if I was visibly shaking. I took a deep breath and decided to stop checking the time.

A hand brought itself up to rest on my shoulder, and it belonged to Aerrow. I turned to look at him, astonishment in my sun colored eyes. He hadn't talked to me, touched me, or even acknowledged my presence in some time. My skin, although covered by cloth and armor, warmed at his touch.

"You're…" He began, but then he paused.

Only to start again. I hated the shakiness in his voice. Even more, I disliked how he tried to hide it. "You're sure about this?"

I nodded my head slowly, staring into my friend and soon to be ex leader's bottomless eyes. I trailed down from their bottle green color to his thin parted lips, his mouth open and no words coming out. Just like a speechless fish with pretty scales.

He reached up and cupped my jaw line. My cheeks were aflame.

"Will I ever see you again after today, Piper?"

No.

Never.

I'll stay on Kiros forever. You don't really want to see me again. You're just kidding yourself. Once I'm gone you'll just hate me the way you were meant to. And soon I'll fade away into the dark recesses of your memories. It was all part of the plan.

"Sure…" I said. My voice sounded clogged.

"Good." His voice sounded the same. He knew I was lying.

I dared to look at the clock one last time. One minute left. I could see our forces, and they were so close.

And then in no time we were part of the army, and we were driving hard and fast towards our destination. Red clouds with matching lightning could be seen in the horizon. Inside that fortress lay my teacher, possibly sick as a dog, or possibly ready to try and kill us all. A small cloud of Talons came out to greet us, but automatically I knew that they would be no match for our militia. All of the carriers started blasting, and the forces on their skimmers all headed for all visible entries in the stronghold.

We docked, and stormed the hallways. The Talons suffered great casualties already, and I think even a few on our side fell too. But I was too focused on finding the hallway with Cyclonis's lab. My mind flashed back to the notes on that blue print: _Epinephrine. _That was all I needed. I stood by Aerrow's side as we bombarded the Cyclonian troops along with many other Sky Knights and their teams. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of a familiar door. I tugged Aerrow's shoulder and pointed towards the door. If the mayhem had stopped, even for a second, I think he might have shed a tear. But it didn't, and he just nodded in return for me to go. It was the last time I saw Aerrow until who knew when; perhaps never. Either way, I pried open the doors to her lab and turned it upside down once again, just like the day we went undercover a few months ago.

I searched every drawer and every cupboard until I found a bag of serum-filled needles; on the side of each vial I glimpsed the words 'adrenaline' and 'epinephrine'. I seized the sack, and ran out of the room before I was caught amidst a group of people supposedly on my side ruining what was left of it. Experiments, discoveries, break throughs-they would all be gone.

But what did it matter? I would have the master herself soon enough.

I ran in the opposite direction of everyone. I had to get back to the now conquered main hanger to retrieve my heliscooter. There was another hanger that few knew about besides the Storm Hawks, thanks to our numerous missions of sneaky and hopefully undiscovered exploration. That, was Cyclonis's only way out. Or at least that's what she must have believed.

There was no way that she could fight off so many people, even with Dark Ace at her side. The Talons were close to being wiped out; there was barely anyone left to protect her. Escape was her only option.

And little did she know that her only option would soon be me.

With my hands squeezing the handles of my heliscooter, I finally reached the back hanger. It was dank, shadowy, and smelled like at least twenty dead bodies were decomposing nearby. I landed, took out my staff, and watched the only entry that was connected to the hanger like a hawk. Faraway explosions and yells sounded in the distance, but other than that it was hushed.

I began to pace in a small radius, the fleeting but agonizing seconds driving me insane. I needed to see her; I needed to see _anyone_. Just being here alone was enough to make me want to throw myself off of the hanger's edge and into the volcanic surface below.

My ears invisibly twitched at the sound of footsteps, delicate but audible against the boiling steel floor. I turned towards the entrance, and saw the exact person I wanted to. And even though it was expected, I suddenly became aware that this would grow to be even more difficult as I saw that Cyclonis was in the arms of her trusty Dark Ace. On the outside I looked calm and ready, but my skin prickled at what I had to do.

Cyclonis looked awful. Her chapped mouth was partially open in surprise of seeing me, and I could see a tint of dark red blood coating her teeth. She was drenched with sweat and her obscure violet eyes were watery. So thin, so fragile. I didn't need any tests or special equipment to know that she didn't have much time left. Dark Ace looked ready to kick my ass. I geared up to do the same in case he tried anything. We never fought, but if today was the day, he would soon find that I was nothing more or less than formidable.

Cyclonis leaned on him for support, and I decided to draw her out.

"What's wrong, Cyclonis?"

Lark was her name. _Was. _Maybe one day I would start calling her that on a regular basis, without the slick undertone of sarcasm. But for now, it was the same old title.

"I'm feeling a bit under the weather."

Talk about an understatement. She could have dropped dead right then and there and I wouldn't have been stunned. Incredibly disappointed and pissed, but not stunned.

"Trust me, you're going to feel a lot worse if you stay here any longer." I told her.

If the Sky Knight army didn't lop off her head the very moment they found her, she would await an interestingexecution in the streets of Atmosia. I wouldn't put it past them that they would keep her alive, on the edge of death, just so they could see her warm entrails strewn across their cobblestone streets.

"Are you going to stand there trying to stall us, or are you going to try and fight me?" Finally, her right hand speaks up.

I reached into the pouch and pulled out a needle. No doubt that they would be watering at the mouth for this stuff. I held it up to my face level with my eyes, watching the opaque substance within grip and slide down the sides like molasses.

"Your lab is an incredible place, Cyclonis. I wanted to stop them from destroying it…but what can I say, there were more important matters at hand."

I lowered the needle, and took a few careful but confident-looking steps towards them. Immediately I saw them go rigid. Dark Ace was a very instinctual man; he watched me cautiously but did not attack. To this day I do not know the reason why. All I know is that he barely struggled as I forced Cyclonis onto the flaming floor and drove the needle into her leg. She gasped at the intrusion, and I injected the serum into her body. Her fast breathing stabilized, and I assumed that the symptoms of her sickness blunted.

Backing away, I watched her stand.

"What the hell was that for?" She asked breathlessly.

"When they catch you, they're going to tear you apart." I said.

"No shit?" She near laughed.

"Well I can't let that happen." I said simply. Even now after all of my planning, I didn't like to admit it; but I felt like I needed her.

"Cyclonis, this girl is wasting our time." Dark Ace said, and he was eager to have a piece of me. Poor despicable man; I was there to give them time.

"Wait." She said.

I waited. She could deny me and be captured by the people I used to fight for, or come with me. Dark Ace could do what he wanted. Something told me that even at the fall of the empire, his allegiance to her wouldn't falter.

"Well Piper, what do you propose we do?"

"Come with me to Kiros."

She snorted. "Why Kiros?"

"I have an MFE chamber there. No one knows about it."

Her eyes widened at that in interest. I found it ironic that she had betrayed my trust once, and now I was asking for hers. Even more, we had absolutely no reason to trust each other. Yet there we were.

"My ass. I'll bet a guillotine is what you meant instead." She said.

I raised one of my eyebrows. "You're choice, _Lark._"

The army was close. The explosions were getting louder. They had to decide. If this plan failed I could leave before the army caught me talking to them, or even claim that I had subdued them in the first place. Voices. Intense heat. Cyclonis and Dark Ace turned to glance at the entrance, probably thinking exactly what I was.

Dark Ace drew his red energy blade, acting like an unmoving brick wall in front of the entrance. Just what did he think he was doing?

"Take her." He said, turning slightly to me. "I'll hold them off."

"Don't be a dumbass," Cyclonis said, all moody and low tenor speech tapering off into an uncharacteristic frantic teenage tone. "You can't beat them all."

"I'll have a better chance than if you were with me, weighing me down. Just go."

I reached out to a physically unstable Cyclonis and tried to grasp her arm, gently as I could.

"No!" She said, jerking away from me. "I'm not going without him."

Dark Ace growled in frustration, sheathing his blade again shortly. He then came over and picked her up, carrying her over to my heliscooter, all the while not wavered by Cyclonis's punches and attempts to get free. He sat her on the seat of my heliscooter, daring her to rise again.

"I'm staying. You're going. I swore to protect you, and that's what I'm doing."

He walked away from a livid Cyclonis, and although she stayed where she was on the back seat of my heliscooter, she burned searing holes into his back with her eyes. They were minutes away. It was now or never.

Dark Ace gave me one last look of something that resembled both gratefulness and disbelief.

"You're too weak to hand even _her _over. I'm not worried."

And he was back to being the brick wall.

The brick wall that would buy us the time we needed to amscray.

We left. Cyclonis never stopped looking back until Terra Cyclonia was out of site completely. She never stopped telling me how she thought this was a joke and that I was going to kill her first chance I got. She never stopped telling me that I was making a huge mistake and that she would have her revenge. She never stopped shouting. Not for a second. Not even when she was slipping into incoherent babbling due to her held-off relapse.

I could hardly say the challenge part was over. On the journey, Cyclonis needed at least four more adrenaline shots, and by the time we arrived on Kiros, the fumes from the tar pits on different parts burning my nostrils just as badly as the smell on Cyclonia. I ran up the steps of the mansion, and Cyclonis was a passed out body in my arms with drool seeping from the corner of her mouth. I took her to the basement where the pod was kept, and hooked up the tubes to her spinal cord as fast as I could. The pod engulfed her, and I didn't know when I would see her again.

Dark Ace said I was weak. I suppose, in a sense, I was. Weak enough to do anything to increase my gift so that I could help people in the future.

Cyclonis would probably later thank god for this alleged weakness. Silently of course. Like hell she would admit it, even in the five years we would spend together completely alone in the tainted unforgiving terrain of Kiros.


	3. Lark

I once again praise Dragonwings144 for the ending to this. I mean, the open ended solution-lacking crap was my idea, but the imagery for the ending was totally inspired by her. To all who stuck by me through this bizarre experiment, thank you; really. I know its not very well developed plot-wise and I really don't have an excuse as to why it is, other than that the story was meant to delve into some different writing styles and some deep characterizations. Seriously, the people who read this are my heroes.

This is for the people who care even a little bit about what happens in the creators of the stories they read's lives. Up until just recently, I had been contemplating some very drastic things. I'm close to an extremely gigantic step in my life, and I felt overwhelmed and depressed about the amount of work I had to do from now until then. Normally, since this IS a multichapter fic, I would have lost interest a long time ago. But for some reason this thing kept screeching at me to finish it, and I did. I really hope its not too half assed, but I would like to point out that this story, although wonderful to letting out my frustrations, was just the tar icing on a very moldy cake. So much crap to do, and this to top it off. But I'm glad I finished it, I really am.

So…here. XD

-0-

_**Lark**_

Hearing Piper leave the lab, I closed my eyes for a brief second. There, waiting for me on the inside of my eyelids was a flashback of the beginning of the first year she brought me to the mansion. After a considerably long session, I emerged from the MFE pod looking at Piper's astonishingly curious face staring back at me. Although I didn't want her to see my unconditioned body and my already thinning hair, all of that took a back seat to the fact that I was there in the first place. At once I asked her where I was and how long I had been out.

Kiros, and four months, she told me.

She helped my weak body dress itself in loose clothes that smelled like cabbage, and then enlightened me on everything. Or tried to; though it only took an hour to explain, it took me years to understand even an inkling. She took me from my fortress on the day of the raid, and Dark Ace made us leave him behind. She brought me here because she wanted to rescue me from my inexorable execution; all because she simply wanted a teacher. I remember staring at her with my sunken mouth half open, listening to her in staggered stillness as she explained why she had done what she did. Most of it was some crap about second chances and how her virtues didn't agree with what was going to happen to me. But I tuned in when she started talking about me teaching her.

She had always used her gifts for good. Mine, not so much.

I wasn't eager to comply, let me tell you. Many times I thought about taking her heliscooter and a bunch of epinephrine needles with me, leaving her behind on Kiros while I was free from the task she needed me to help her complete. It was nice to think about, but who was I really kidding? Without the MFE chamber I would drop out of the sky like a dead insect. I couldn't live on adrenaline serum for the rest of my presumably short life. I had no resources.

And I was tired. _So _tired. As much as I hated being around this girl whom I had so many mixed feelings about, I was too physically weak to run. It would take time to get used to having a student.

The first year was hard. So hard that sometimes I contemplated shooting myself. I'm sure she did the same.

But eventually, we adapted to each other.

We do crazy things to achieve the things we're meant to have, I guess.

It occurred to me some time after I woke up from my first MFE session on Kiros that I already should have known that Piper was planning something. Even though I was much too ill to retreat to my lab in the time before the raid, something was amiss in my fortress. My senses had to have tingled as her graceful dark fingers held my notes and written experiments in her hands. I should have known. Yet, when I saw her in the hanger that day, my expectancy of everything was thrown askew; the result of the biggest curve ball ever thrown at me.

The day we realized that our opinions of each other had completely changed, it was the same old argument. I hadn't showered in weeks. Even I could smell my own odor, but I refused to bathe. Piper was experimenting with two rare lunar crystals and was trying to mold them together in one. I stood over her with my arms crossed across my chest watching her work, the both of us trying hard not to say anything about the smell that was now wafting through the room.

Finally, she dropped the crystals unceremoniously back onto the desk and turned to me with a glare.

"Why have you stopped?" I asked, returning the look she gave me.

"You need to take a bath, that's why." She said shortly.

I narrowed my eyes. I didn't like being commanded to do anything. I agreed that I stank, but each time I showered, my dark tresses came out by the roots in between my fingers.

"I don't need to do anything. Now get back to work."

"You smell positively awful. I know you don't like it, but you need to take care of your body, and that includes washing it."

I resisted grabbing one of the crystals on the desk and striking the back of her head with it.

"You smell so bad I can't concentrate." She said, looking away.

"If you're really that distracted by something so trivial, then you can screw off." I sneered.

Piper rose in a flash from her chair and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt. My physical strength was abysmal compared to hers, but I still stared at her with unruffled contempt as her fist gripped my clothes.

"You're taking a fucking bath."

That's when she started dragging me. And that's when I started screaming. I honestly don't know what truly induced it; all I know is that I snapped a little bit. All sorts of things flew from my mouth; from mindless obscenities to threats about leaving and never coming back. She picked me up roughly when we came to the winding staircase, and was undeterred when I began to hit and scratch her. Like a feline on crack I tried to escape from her hold on me. We reached my bathroom, and she roughly put me down on the cold tile floor, making sure to have a good grasp on my wrist so I couldn't get away. She jiggled the faucet of the bathtub so it began to pour steaming hot water. I yelled and flailed like a maniac.

Finally she couldn't take it anymore and straddled me while holding down my arms on either side. I stopped my mayhem, but I breathed heavily through my nose. I looked at this girl on top of me, holding me down so that I didn't do any damage to myself as I threw that unbelievably childish tantrum. I barely remember what I was having a fit about. All I completely recollected was the seconds passing by, Piper still on top of me with small delicate beads of her sweat dripping off into my face as we both reeled from the one sided fight, completely exhausted.

I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine. I couldn't comprehend what I saw in those eyes, but whatever it was; it helped slow down both my breathing and the violent pulsing of my heart.

The bath was ready. Welcoming steam rose off of the surface of the water. We must have stayed in that position for at least ten whole minutes as the tub filled up. Piper got off of me, and when I didn't move, she helped me sit up. As delicately as she could, she helped me out of my clothes, and I recalled blushing as my nipples became rose-red when they hit the air. It dimly comforted me how not once did she become flustered as she exposed my pale gangly naked form. But looking back, I wonder if it was because at that moment she didn't see me as anything else but a sick young woman who needed to be cared for. Gripping her forearms and trying hard to ignore the way my small breasts were rubbing against the smooth threads of her clothes, she led me over to the fresh bath. The scalding water stung my skin, but I didn't make any noise as she helped me lower myself into the tub.

This girl.

This girl and her unfathomable abilities.

Neck deep in the torrid soapy water, I stared at a fatigued Piper who still knelt next to my bath. My face was carved in a tired look of disbelief. Much like the appearance of someone who had just seen a drunken polar bear riding a tricycle. My outburst had taught her that beneath all of the layers of evil empire bullshit, I was a girl barely older than herself, sick in the body and even the mind sometimes. Just a girl. That's all.

And I learned that she was truly a good person. Like I said before, I can't hate good people. Only a good person would sit there and hold me in the middle of the night as surge after surge of blood would leak from my mouth and onto my chin. Or refrain from even sniggering as she changed my soiled sheets; stained yellow at least once a month when my body lost all control.

Several times, as we sweated together in the collected humidity of the bathroom, we locked eyes. Using her tangerine irises she would silently ask if she should leave, and I would silently tell her to do whatever the hell that she wanted.

It was not one of those shared epiphanies. We both still went to bed angry and sore at each other that night. But not because we hated each other.

Back in the present, I opened my eyes and the memory vanished like a wisp of black smoke.

That reminded me, my pipe was still burning.

I took one last hit, savoring the sweet smoke that filled my lungs. I would need a good high to deal with Piper. She could be sweet girl, but when she was emotional even I tried to steer clear. But this wasn't something we could both pretend wasn't happening. It would be like pretending that the almost constant vomit and bleeding was normal. I was tired of the way she treated me; the way she treated herself.

I dumped the rest of the herb out the window and watched the ashy remnants fall several stories. I set the pipe down on Piper's desk, and made the difficult journey up the stairs to Piper's room.

-0-

Each step up the staircase was like every string on my imprisoned minion Ravess's violin wrapping themselves around my legs and pulling taut until it broke the skin. My room was closer to the stairs than Piper's was. I trapped moans from the pain in the middle of my throat to make sure that she didn't hear such sounds. Piper's care was genuine, and it seemed to repair my broken state somewhat at first. But what did she see me as?

Nothing else but a sick child in a twenty year old's body, probably.

I hated quarrelling with Piper. I hated when something truly serious popped up and threatened our relationship like what happened previously in the lab. Our interactions seemed so natural one moment, and the next it was like our first day on Kiros. The tall but somehow modest door to her room was in sight, and I slowly made my way over. The door was only halfway closed, and I gently pushed it open. Piper sat on her bed, facing away from me. Her back was hunched as she stared out her dusty window, shoulders stiff save for their quivering movements.

Well shit. She was crying.

Tears weren't very common between either of us. Our faces were usually hard and stony, only dropping the statue-esque exterior when I made a dirty joke or caustic comment. She sat over there on her well made bed, pretending to be unaware that I had entered, but I knew better.

"Piper?" I said without hesitation.

It would take more than my dark skinned friend's tears to make me want to vacillate.

"What?" She said shortly. Her back was to me, but I saw her hands fly up to her face and wipe away tears that I couldn't see but I knew were there.

"Tell me why you're upset."

"I thought it would've been obvious." She said thickly.

"Oh I have an idea, but I never liked to assume things."

I gingerly sat on the corner of her bed. She scooted farther away.

"…Why do you insist on trying to kill yourself?" She said barely above a whisper.

"Show's how much you know." I said. No doubt the words were cold and snappish.

"Just because I'm not wild about living another twenty years like this I'm suddenly suicidal?"

"No, but-"

"'But' nothing. You try and spend one day in my body, Piper. Try it, and then say that I'm wrong for feeling the way I do."

Piper didn't say anything. But I continued.

"I teach you, I talk to you, I let you see me when I'm at my weakest. What more do you want from me?"

"I want you to _live_!" She said while turning her head to look at me. There was fire in her orange eyes, fire that was tired of what I was saying and wanted to burn my realistic attitude to the ground.

"You think I don't want that?" I said, standing up and raising my voice slightly; something I rarely did when I wasn't intent on physically inducing some hell.

"You think I don't want to quit those fucking sessions? You think I don't want to quit bleeding out of my ass?"

Piper narrowed her eyes and turned away, refusing to look at me. My face softened, and I realized that a full out row was apparently not going to be the right way to go about this.

"Each day I climb out of bed is for your sake, Piper." I wasn't good at saying these things…but I figured that it was my best shot to finding out what was going on with her. Something wasn't right, and it was up to the both of us to find out what it was, and fix it.

Or at least acknowledge it, and not let it linger between us.

"But…I guess, for some reason that isn't good enough for you."

She gulped loudly, probably swallowing back an ugly retort. Her next string of words was not ugly, though. In fact they were in a manner that I wanted to hear. Brutally honest, revealing. Even risky. And so simple. Letting such feelings lose is dangerous sometimes. But unlike the backstabbing cuss I used to be, I had no more desire to rip out the girl's spine and use it to decorate my wall of accomplishments.

"I need you." She said. The words must have scraped her throat on the way out. But that was fine with me. At least she was admitting to this, although I already knew that she felt that way.

And then, she said:

"And I just don't understand why you think the way that you do."

Somewhere, in that slender supposedly do-good virtuous crap-filled body of hers, there was a little monster that was trying to piss me off. Trying to pin the unspeakably insane elements on me, because we all know how easy that is. I used to be Master Cyclonis, deadly and feared, and for the longest time successful at what my regime was trying to do. There was nothing left for me to say, right? After my forces killed off thousands of people and destroyed so many ways of life, there was absolutely nothing left for me to say, right?

_Right?_

My hand bolted away from me and held her face firmly in my palm. She knew not to struggle when I acted like this. On a regular basis I was rigid and solidly hard to please, but Piper's constant care for me led me away from my lethal demeanor that used to be delicious and cold as a metal key against a tongue. As luck would have it, she coaxed both the decent and the toxicity out of me. I brought my face down to her level, my colorless hand still gripping her dark jaw. My words were careful and delicate. But not ones that caressed; ones that pierced like arrows. It was time to entice those pesky monsters out of my friend, whether she liked to regard them or not.

"The way I think is not complicated, Piper. I hate, I love, I survive. That is all. You want to try and delve deeper? Be my guest, but I trust you won't get too far." I tilted my head in mock curiosity. "But what most intrigues me is not how _I _think, but how _you _think."

I let go of her face with a slight jerk.

I looked down at her, my eyes flaring. "Such a perfect life, Piper. Set before you like a slab of meat on a silver platter. And what do you do?" I snorted, shaking my head in deep censure. "…You throw it away."

She shook her head vigorously. "It had to be done. This is what I'm supposed to do."

"And I see that! But was this worth it, Piper? Leaving behind your squadron? Your friends? Your _life_? _Why_ would you do such a thing?"

"I know _I _probably would be the type, but you, Piper?" I turned away from her a little bit. "I don't think I'll _ever _understand why you did what you did."

She was hurting. I'll bet she knew that her choice was crazy, even before she went through with it. And yet…she made it. She took me under her wing and in return I took her under mine, creating this insane and exceedingly misunderstood symbiotic relationship. She was amazing, but completely nuts. And everyone regarded meas the ludicrous one. At first it struck me how much what she had done bugged me; it seemed so perfect, the most brilliant way to send those wretched Storm Hawks on a spiraling array of emotional break downs. That was back when I hated them; actually part of me _still _hates them. But what she did was just…illogical.

She said nothing more to me, and I stared at her midnight blue head that was once again looking out her window at nothing in particular. I took her silence as a blatant disengagement, and I wordlessly left her by herself. I walked gingerly down the hallway to my room, closed the door behind me, and fell face down onto my bed; still unmade from my unceremonious sleeping habits.

How could she hold me those nights, stroking my slick oily hair and putting a cold washcloth on my burning forehead without feeling guilty about leaving them? How could she stick around and not consider going back to them when I took one of her projects and threw it out the window into the canopy of trees surrounding the mansion claiming that it didn't have enough ridges for it to properly work?

I'd hate it if she left me. I hate it, but I'd understand. What mystified me is why she stayed. Why she did any of this. As dependent as she feels on me, I can't help but think that she's part of what made me Lark again. I didn't have my blonde hair or those annoyingly cute freckles, but I was still Lark.

And in all honesty? Larkie girl didn't like to think too much. Keeping troubled thoughts walled up in my head would have made me even more insane than I already am. Her decision had weighed on my mind heavily on some days more than others, but never had it really been broken to me that what she did was just so unsound. I thought perhaps, there was something other than virtue brewing under her skin; her beautiful dark skin. Something so self-centered that it even made me want to cringe. Mostly because I didn't come to know a Piper that hoarded her desires.

Okay…okay.

What wouldn't I know about the dark side of people?

Apparently my dark side came out quite a bit, even now when I wasn't surrounded by people who feared me.

And it was coming out again, a little more literally than I would have liked.

Into my vision, like a light leaving the hallway.

My eyes rolled back into my head and I instantly felt my dirty blood straining to pump its way through my veins. Even though I was already lying down on my bed I felt as though I had fallen there after fainting. My body began to boil, what literally felt like flames scraping themselves against my insipid skin. Loud moans escaped my mouth. My teeth grinded together. My eyes were clamped shut and even if I opened them I knew I wouldn't see anything. In the struggle to escape the pain even for a second I mused that death was probably so much better than dying.

My door flew open, but I couldn't see it. Nor could I see Piper rushing in and gathering my upper body into her arms. I could hear her voice calling my name and her hands rushing all over me, feeling my pulse, and then holding her ear close to my lips to listen if I was still breathing. The sightless seconds went by, filled only by Piper's shuffling as she held my torso close to her chest and the insane pounding in my head. I was sick. _So _sick. I needed a session. I hated them, but I needed one. Piper needed to treat me like I was; a dirty minded criminal who knew when it was time to put away the weapons and concede to a way of living that would attempt to change who I was. I dare it to succeed at that…but I didn't have the urge to go back to the ruins of my fortress anymore; quite a huge difference.

I needed a session. I wanted to understand Piper's mind. And part of me wanted to run from it too.

The light started to penetrate my retinas again, giving me my vision back. Once again I found myself looking in Piper's sternly focused face. She helped me sit up, and I leaned my back into her palm flat against my jutting spine. My delirious mind wondered why her hand was there, holding me up because I couldn't do it myself. Why was it there, instead of clutching the steel of the old cruiser that was once her home?

Her face was still stained with dried salty tears, but her voice had no miscellany that would suggest that she had been crying.

"We have to do it tonight."

Had I possessed the strength, I would have nodded.

-0-

Down in the basement, Piper handed me my cloak that was cleaned and didn't smell like dried blood anymore. But I took little enjoyment out of the fact that it smelled like fresh flower blossoms from the laundry detergent. My eyes struggled to focus on Piper as she began to converge the right resources that would soon be in my bloodstream killing off all of my defective cells. I had nothing to look forward to except a world of intangible dark matter. Piper was scrupulous each time she set up the pod for my treatments, making sure everything worked perfectly and wouldn't malfunction in the middle of a session. It took me a while to contain my impressed mental comments when she told me that she built it herself, using the stolen blueprints from my old lab.

My fingers took a nervous reach and rested just barely passed my lips so my teeth could bite on the nail. Although it was difficult to ignore the symptoms, an upcoming session was far more ominous than anything I may have been feeling. Often I questioned why something that was meant to help me survive did such a good job of hurting me. I didn't like to think about the pod; it may have helped me stay alive and dwindle on the border between living and dying, but its process made me hateful of its entirety. I never really found out why the growth that led to my birth was toxic, but it was moments like these that I cursed my father's ignorant engineering crew for their stupidity.

But like many things, there was nothing else to do but deal with it.

My watery eyes stared at Piper who was now going down her checklist of things to monitor before commencing a function enhancement.

There had to be guilt focused behind those attentive corneas. _Something _that would depict nostalgic feelings for her old life.

Yet as she continued her manual scan, there appeared to be none.

The sun had set hours ago.

"It's almost ready." She said.

I narrowed my cloudy eyes, shaking my head. "Why the hell are you doing this, Piper?"

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I asked: Why are you doing this? Why are you making sure that something doesn't go wrong? Why are you checking everything over? It's like you dedicated your whole fucking life to making sure I don't croak while you're around."

She set down her pad and stared at me, her challenging watch almost daring me to go on. Never dare me, because you bet your ass I'll go on.

"I'm a fucking criminal. I used to love killing people, and part of me still misses it. What in the world possessed you to actually go out of your way and do this for me?"

My voice sounded like I was intoxicated; my speech was slurred and my lips weren't moving properly to form the words I wanted. But I didn't care that I sounded like I had a mental disability; she needed to know what I thought about her little decision. It may have been five years, but we probably would have gone for the rest of eternity without mentioning it, so what did it matter?

She looked at me for a long time without saying anything. I was about to tell her to just haul me into the pod so I wouldn't have to deal with her seemingly non-responsive mood anymore, but finally she spoke.

"Because we both deserved it."

I narrowed my eyes, but this time instead of being angry I thought about her enigmatic reply. I may have gotten a lot of things in life that I didn't deserve, and in my opinion this was really no exception. Perhaps Piper deserved something grand in this life and this was what she considered to be grand.

As crazy as it sounded, I gave in.

God forbid Piper find out how I really think. The things inside of my head; they would scar her; mentally dismember her. I knew I could be a real loon, but in that department I was alone. Never did I once consider that maybe Piper would lose some of her sanity on her journey too. She was just so meticulous with everything she did, so it never crossed my mind.

"Do you ever want to go back?" I asked.

Blankly, she stared into the air. "Sometimes, just to see everyone. But to continue like the old days…no, I don't want that."

She went to the black side panel of the pod and switched it on. A loud humming noise began to ring out through the basement, and it was the last thing that threw me into the reality that I was really going in for another session. I cannot, _cannot _stress my trepidation for these things enough. It's impossible. My legs started trembling, and not from their weakness. Each time, a request to just let me stay out here in the real world always wanted to come out of my mouth, but for some reason I always bit my tongue and refrained from asking. I had my sneaking suspicions that it was pride, but who knew; I only thought about the sessions in depth when I was about to be committed to one of them in the near future.

Suddenly, the urge to understand her way of thinking was starting to dwindle. The mysteries of some people were never meant to be solved; I should understand that better than anyone. If she wanted to leave her perfect life for the likes of me, then I should secretly be grateful; without her, my remains would be scattered in dishonorable places all across the world I once was dedicated to destroying. Anything was better than dying at the hands of those Sky Knights and their plastic entities they called ethics.

"Before I go in there, you have to agree to do something for me." I said.

She nodded for me to continue. I reflected amusedly that it was like I was saying my last words. The session wouldn't kill me, the exact opposite. But it seemed like every time I emerged after a few weeks or months or whatever amount of time I spent in the pod, I had died a little inside. Ah yes…something sentimental was in order. I normally wasn't the type to oblige to such a rule, but…I needed certain things from this woman.

"Listen, Piper." I said, trying to enunciate my words a little more. "If I go in there, you have to promise me you'll leave someday."

That blank stare again, asking me what I'm talking about. It was odd how an emotive Piper could be so easily replaced with an impassive one. Like that'll deter me, though.

"I don't know what you're planning to do in your life, and frankly I don't care. Just get out of here, and use what I've taught you. That would be enough for me."

Still nothing. But her eyes were flickering as if saying 'but…I wanted to stay here forever'. Foolish, foolish girl. She must have read my thoughts, because I know she doesn't want to come off any more groundless than I already thought her to be. So she nodded slowly.

"…Okay."

"Good."

"Where will I go?"

I shrugged. "Go back to the Storm Hawks."

"Like they'll want to see me."

"I doubt they'll greet you with hugs and kisses." I said sarcastically. "But maybe, once you leave, you should seek them out."

Piper had this look on her face like she was trying to remember something long since past, buried in an alcove of her mind that she made sure to avoid during the normal hours of her days. At times I wondered if she even reminisced about the times before she tended to my useless body. I could be very open about myself when I wanted to be, and even though I hated to disclose it, she helped me open up quite a bit. I didn't have a problem with people keeping themselves hidden from the world; after all I did it for years and it was a smart thing to do. I really couldn't blame Piper for doing the same, even when she's lived with me for such a long time.

I shrugged again. "I don't care where you go. I'm not letting you stay here for the rest of your life."

She seemed to understand, but she still didn't just shut her mouth and accept that flat out. If she did, it wouldn't be Piper who was talking, would it?

"And what about you?"

I wiped some sweat off of my forehead that probably wasn't even there. "I've taught you everything I know. I'm not going to let it just marinate in your brain while you change my bloody diapers until we're fifty."

I didn't give a damn what happened to me. She just had to leave eventually. Show the world what she was made of, like she could've done even without my help, but that's something she'd never hear a word of.

When you got around all of the saving (or in my case, destroying) the world business, it was actually kind of sad; the kind of lives we were living. Granted I suppose we made our choices that made us who we are, but I can't help but imagine ourselves as regular teenagers, talking on our mobile communicators and spreading gossip. Staying up late reading various books and manuals, on our stomachs while in bed, maybe a pet cat snoozing near our feet. Such a frivolous, but heavenly-sounding existence.

Instead, we were here.

Preparing for my treatment.

And my trembling was not going away.

Piper looked at me with something resembling sympathy. Never did she pity my plights, but given her compassionate nature she didn't like to see anyone suffer to my degree. She knew I hated the sessions, I've told her before. But somehow the visual demonstrations of just how much I hated them were anything but conventional. She walked over to the closet and pulled out the tubes that she would soon be trying to gently inch through my skin and into the upper part of my spinal cord. It was such a disgusting feeling, but weirdly enough I felt a little better knowing that it was Piper's hands attached to those tubes. She was just like that, giving me a wrong but vivid sense of security. If it hurt, I knew it wasn't because of her.

I gripped my knee caps, trying to make them stop shivering. Piper came back with the tubes in her grasp, but she was staring at my pathetic reaction to the upcoming treatment. The way she was looking at me now made me want to look away because it was so abhorrently caring. Her palm came up to my boney shoulder.

"Are they really that bad?"

I wanted to spit in her face for saying something so ignorant, shout at her, retort something that would insult her intelligence. But her dark face bound me in that way. I only looked at her collar bone to avoid her eyes, and make several small quick nods.

"Why, what happens in them?"

She knew the scientific process, but the actual experience dodged her.

Honest to the core for one of the few times in my life, I said, "I can hardly describe it in words."

She hugged me.

My initial reaction was startled, and I tried to tug myself out of her arms, but she didn't let go, nor was she put off. Her face buried itself in my black unwashed hair, and her lips were so close to my ear. For a moment I forgot about the session, my bid for her to leave, and just…_everything._ I hated this. I wanted her to let go and stop feeding me those feelings that I could never truly earn the right to receive. But she just kept me here, my skinny torso against hers that was comfortably filled out, her heavy heartbeat still so filled with vivacity pulsing warmly against mine; faint and drained from years of fighting this disease.

It was times like this she reminded me of my possibly late Dark Ace; wherever he was, in this plane of existence or the next. So much like him, but there were more differences than similarities. It was once him who brushed my bangs that stuck to my dicey skin away from my face.

Her lips moved against my ear, and something slipped passed them that I almost didn't catch.

"You deserved all of this."

Being sick? The raid? The sessions? Her care? All of it?

She pulled away, ignoring the grotesque look on my face. Such contact still disturbed me.

"Would you like me to do it with you?"

I stared.

"You don't want that."

She opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. "Trust me."

If this was curiosity, she just needed to throw that shit out the window. This wasn't something she could follow through with me. This wasn't something I _wanted _her to follow through with me. I wished a lot of things upon some people, but never did I go as far to wish a treatment on someone else. It was out of the question. I didn't want needles in her neck like me. I didn't want her to sit in the darkness like a piece of meat on a stick for the darkness to prey on like me. She didn't need to experience this. She _didn't_.

"I should."

I still didn't say anything. Just looked at her like the mad cow that she was.

"…in exchange for me leaving soon after."

When I told her I wanted to leave, I didn't consider it being so soon. Was she really going to leave me after this? I was suddenly faced with mulling over what she said.

"So what your saying is," I said, the rasp in my voice not shielding my sardonic tone, "If I let you in the pod with me, drugged up and unconscious and all that fun stuff, you're going to leave afterwards?"

"Hopefully, yeah."

"Just how soon afterwards are we talking about?" I said.

"Asap."

She was going to leave once it was done. Away from me and this lonely place forever, just like I wanted. But only if I let her inside the place I feared the most. I didn't know for sure if it would be the same for her as it had been for me. Then, something painfully obvious came to mind.

"And how do you know it won't be harmful?" I said.

"It won't be."

"_How_ do you know?" I hissed.

"I built it, remember?" She said.

I was going to scold her, but the words got caught in my throat. Not out of tension, but because all of a sudden I started having small convulsions. No matter how hard I tried to breathe smoothly it stopped before it reached my mouth every time. Piper held my head up to try and keep my throat clear, hoping that I would breathe better, but it didn't help. I grabbed her wrist.

"H-hurry…" I said. And that was all I could say. At this point I didn't care what she did; I needed to be in the pod soon, or else I would just get worse and worse until I stopped functioning all together.

Since we would be sharing tubes the process would take longer to heal me. With the treatment serums in one tube for me and an extra dosage anesthesia in hers, she sank one into my neck and laid me down onto the platform before doing the same to herself. I was still shuddering uncontrollably. I was breathing easier, but the deathly tight strain was back in the pit of my stomach knowing what I was close to beginning. Piper pressed some sort of timer on the pod's side, and laid down on the platform next to me. We were pushed into the pod and engulfed by the dark. It was just one big excuse to be near me, I knew that; but I didn't say anything. I shook, and beads of sweat ran into my eyes and receding hairline. My flimsy hand gripped the weaves of my cloak. We would be going under anytime now.

"Feeling drowsy yet?" I asked quietly, smirking even while trembling.

"Uh-uh."

Well that was obviously a lie. Her mumbled reply told me that not only was she already feeling the affects of the sedative, but she was scared. Who wouldn't be? I certainly was. Soon we would both be encased in a sightless night from which there was no escape. She would feel her way around her bubble and feel nothing, while I just accepted my place and sat still for the amount of time I was stuck there. Her hand suddenly crept away from her side and the fingers laced themselves around mine, like soft feathery wings with loads of gained proficiency in their prints. I let my hand go limp in hers, not quite sure how to react to such a gesture.

I was sure there was far more narcotics in my tube than hers, and yet a few seconds later I heard her heavy breathing, signaling that she had fallen under before I had. Piper's body was so close, so near. In a rare rush of imploration I wished we lain this way under different circumstances. Although it was hard to differentiate real dark and the dark during a session, I felt my eyelids close and my body teleport to that cursed place in which I would sit until it was time for me to face reality again. So there I sat, in my respective place. Usually I faced a few months or so of this, and at the very start I was run down from the dismal insight of how long I would have to be there. But even then, as I appeared to be alone in that chasm of acute seclusion, I could feel my hand still clasped in someone else's. It was the only warmth I had ever felt in that place.

She would leave me. She would fight her own battles. I would wither away and die, and we would both accept that.

The warmth from my hand spread to my body, and before I could stop myself I indulged in the memory of Piper's lips against my ear, the slender feel of her fingers entangled with mine that were thin and breakable, the way I clutched at her chest when she carried me bridal style after I would sometimes collapse right in the middle of a lesson.

I laid my head down on the hard invisible floor of my state, and for the first time, I detachedly slept within the pod.


End file.
